


The Badge and the Fedora

by Pickwick12



Category: White Collar (TV 2009)
Genre: Abduction, Crime, Eventual Romance, F/M, Family, Gen, Mystery, Neal Caffrey Needs a Hug, Neal Caffrey gets a hug, Peter Needs a Hug, Post-Canon, fluff but make it very serious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 22,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29598825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pickwick12/pseuds/Pickwick12
Summary: Present time. Seven years ago, Peter decided to prioritize his family instead of going after the not-dead Neal. He still misses him deeply, though he recognizes that Neal himself is the one who taught him how to be a man who could make that selfless decision.Neal lives in Paris, a practically mythical figure known for helping the poor and disadvantaged get back at the rich who think they are beyond the law. It's a job he attributes to Peter's compassion and how it influenced him to the point that he can't resist using his talents to help people.Neal Burke is seven years old, and he has no idea that his worst day is going to be the start of these two crossing paths once again.(TW: This story will contain kidnapping)(I am not great at summaries; the story is better)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

Peter jerked awake, turning over as he felt his wife gently shake his shoulder. “You okay? Bad dream? You were moving around like crazy.”

“Nah,” he answered, gazing across at El’s beautiful face. “Good dream. I was catching a bad guy with Neal.”

“You still miss him,” she answered, cupping Peter’s cheek with her hand. “I do, too.” 

He nodded in agreement. “Sometimes I still feel like I’ll get to the office and he’ll be there.”

“What do you think he’s doing now?” Elizabeth asked, cuddling closer to her husband’s side.

“Knowing Neal, probably stealing something,” Peter said with a rueful smile.

“I’m going with helping someone who needs it,” Elizabeth retorted, laying her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes.

Peter continued to smile to himself, cuddling her back to sleep but thinking of the man who had been closer to him than a friend. A friend, he might have given up on along the way. Caffrey had become a brother, and that was something that couldn’t change. Choosing not to go after him the last time had been one of the hardest decisions of Peter Burke’s life. It had caused him to realize something that he’d never realized before: Neal had taught him as much as he’d ever taught Neal.

The Agent Burke who had caught Neal Caffrey would never have let go of the clues pointing to Neal being alive. He would have put the chase before anything else, brittle in his drive. It was Neal himself who had taught Peter to be more than a good man in the textbook, black-and-white sense. He had taught Peter to stop, to feel, to love and forgive even when it was hard. He knew, now, that he’d become a better husband and father because of Neal, and as a result, he’d had the strength to let go. He’d prioritized El and baby Neal ahead of the most intriguing chase of his life.

Of course, a man like Peter had never wallowed in self-pity or regret. He’d thrown himself wholeheartedly into loving his wife and teaching his son and leading the white collar crime division with as much conscientious ethicality as he ever had. Only El knew the truth of the monumental sacrifice he’d made, but she loved him for it, and that was more than enough.

Still, nights like this, he couldn’t help missing his partner. The truth was, nobody else he’d worked with before or since had ever been the same. Wherever he was, Peter thought to himself as he drifted back to sleep, Neal was family. 

—

Little did Peter and Elizabeth Burke know that both of them were right at the same time. Across the world, Neal Caffrey was stealing something—to help someone who needed it.

Neal had decided to do the job himself. It required a certain amount of finesse, and though he trusted his associates, he felt the most comfortable relying on his own skillset. He also, it had to be admitted, didn’t mind donning black tie formalwear and driving his convertible to the Parisian suburbs. This wasn’t so much white collar crime as it was golden spoon crime.

Normally, the suburbs didn’t interest Neal that much, but today was different. As he approached the mansion, which was obscenely large compared to what most of France’s population could afford, he felt the familiar thrill of the case, the adrenaline that filled him whenever a heist was underway. 

Staring at the imposing house, one might have been tempted to think of old money, especially since it had been built in neoclassical style. The truth, however, was very different. The house belonged to the Danziger family, who were Americans. 

Charles Danziger had made his money through oil. Neal had first heard of him in New York, where the deals had been done and the millions had been acquired. Once truly wealthy, Danziger had moved himself, his wife, and his young daughter to Paris, the place he’d always considered to represent the height of culture and success. 

Danziger had built the house for a paltry twenty million, and it now stood like something old before its time, because Charles Danziger had died—an untimely biking accident at fifty-three, and his wife and daughter had been left alone with a respectably large fortune.

That fortune did not remain merely respectably large. The whispers—and more than whispers—said that Lucy Danziger, the unfortunate widow, liked to collect art and sell it for a profit, that she had grown her fortune by more than a hundred million. The deepest whispers questioned the legality of her methods.

Neal had investigated. With his ties, it wasn’t particularly difficult to find a trail. Mrs. Danziger traded in both legitimate and stolen pieces, with most of her profits coming from the second. She was no common criminal, and these were no commonly-known thefts. She was too intelligent for that. No, her speciality was pieces of dubious origin—paintings lost in wartime, sculptures left behind by refugees, priceless heirlooms misplaced. Questionable, but difficult for the average buyer to trace.

This gray area had made Lucy Danziger one of the wealthiest women in France. Her unscrupulous buyers were usually aware that they were purchasing pieces with questionable histories, so they asked nothing. Lucy provided supposedly-legal ownership paperwork that somehow avoided pesky legal fees, which the buyers loved. 

It worked. It worked because the rightful owners of these stolen masterpieces, people who had histories and and families who had escaped unspeakable tragedies, either didn’t know or had no idea how to verify family legends about lost heirlooms. 

Until the day Stella found Robin Hood. The man they called Robin Hood—or, rather, the legend, or myth, depending on who you asked—had shown up in Paris gossip in early 2015. He was a rumor, the idea of a man who helped people get back at those the law was too big to touch, who stole from the rich to help the poor they’d wronged. The media had dubbed him “Robin Hood,” and the name stuck.

Neal figured it would have amused Peter Burke to no end to know that he’d successfully corrupted him, that the conman who had once prided himself on looking out for #1 could no longer shake the need to help other people. Peter had not succeeded in transferring the ethos of the badge, but what he had passed to Neal was far more important—he’d given Neal his heart. As a result, Neal had become a private investigator of sorts, and more than that. He couldn’t help it; Peter had taught a young criminal to see beyond people’s needs as something to exploit and instead to empathize and solve. 

Neal still cared little for laws, but he’d come to care deeply about right things and wrong things. Empathize and solve—Neal was under no illusion, now, that the deal he’d once offered to Peter Burke across a prison table had somehow been too attractive to resist. The thing he hadn’t admitted to himself for years, that maturity now permitted him to admit, was that Peter hadn’t taken an offer he couldn’t refuse; he’d taken on a person. For years, Neal had pretended to himself that his skill or the Blacklist-like promise of his knowledge about other criminals had somehow lured his partner into the deal. However, the truth was, Peter had been an extremely capable agent without him, and his upward trajectory had already been assured when Neal came along.

And so, Neal Caffrey became Robin Hood—a man who operated outside the law for the sake of the disadvantaged. Not because Peter Burke had once heard an offer he couldn’t refuse, but because he’d once empathized with a scared kid doing his best not to look scared and decided to change his life, without anything whatsoever to gain from it. 

The people who whispered about a mystery called Robin Hood didn’t know that it all came down to compassion—the compassion a man with a badge had shown a kid in handcuffs, compassion he would keep showing for years, even when that kid violated every principle he held dear. Robin Hood existed as much for Peter as himself, and Neal liked to think he might even be proud. 

—

Neal parked outside the Danziger gate. The red light on the gate security camera wasn’t flashing, which meant that his associate, Rene, had managed to hack into and disable the system right on time. He checked his watch. 4:00 a.m., nearly on the dot. As he climbed the gate and dropped onto the ground inside the property, he was gratified to find that, as expected, there was no sign of family or staff about. Even the caretaker had the week off, he had previously discovered.

Neal walked confidently down the paved road to the mansion, glad for the lights that illuminated the property even when the family was away. With no neighbors for miles and security disabled, there was no particular reason for him to be covert about his entrance. He went straight for the front doors.

—

The whole thing had started with Stella. Short, slight, and white-haired, she had looked nothing like June but reminded Neal of her anyway, eighty-five if she was a day.

“O’Halloran sent me,” she’d said, taking a seat on the sofa in the Paris apartment Neal used for meetings. “He said you don’t like to do business face-to-face, but I don’t like to do it remotely. You shouldn’t blame him for sending me here. He trusts me. You can, too.” Neal had looked her over and thought she was probably right. He was used to sizing people up in an instant. “My goodness, you’re handsome,” Stella had added after a while. “They told me you were smart, not that you were beautiful,”

Neal wouldn’t have admitted it, but by the end of the conversation, he belonged entirely to to the old lady. She could have asked him for anything, but she just wanted a painting.

—

Neal easily picked the lock on the double front doors and entered the Danziger family’s domain. He was immediately greeted by the sculpture of Hephaestus, a huge, marble monstrosity that Lucy kept in her permanent collection. Neal shut the door behind him and activated his flashlight, heading for the light controls he knew were on the right side wall of the entry room and activating them.

His objective was one painting, Dante’s Paradise, a painting Stella’s family had owned until the Nazi occupation of Poland. She had been a little girl, saved by the kindness of neighbors who had taken her in and passed her off as their own child. Her parents, and their beloved painting, she had never seen again. “I want to see paradise once more before I die,” she’d said to Neal, “but Lucy Danziger plans to sell it to the highest bidder.”

Neal had often thought it was absurd how much the rich relied on their security systems. Disable those, as he had done, and entire fortunes could be laid bare for the taking. He had no qualms about helping himself to any of the Danzigers’ ill-gotten luxuries, but he kept his focus on the mission: Get Stella’s painting and get out. Even the smoothest plan could go south in an instant, and he could not afford extracurricular distractions.

Intel from a former member of staff indicated that new acquisitions were kept in the front reception room, where Lucy displayed them for guests who would come to see the wares before auction. Neal moved through the long entryway, relieved to see more signs of disabled security cameras. To the right of the huge foyer, he found the reception room as promised. The room was eerily white—furniture, walls, and velvet drapes—the more to show off the focal point in the center of the back wall.

Dante’s Paradise was as beautiful as the photos Neal had seen. He indulged in a moment of appreciation of the masterpiece, which depicted the poet Virgil giving Dante to Beatrice, who would guide him through paradise in the final cantos of the Divine Comedy. Neal knew that Stella’s attachment to the painting went far beyond its subject, but it was a formidable work, and, as an artist, he appreciated its loveliness. 

“What are you doing?” If Neal had been tempted to imagine that things were going more than perfectly, he was ripped out of that delusion by the sight of a woman in pajamas in the doorway of the receiving room with a gun in her hand.

To be continued...


	2. Missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal receives an intriguing offer, and Peter loses his son.

Neal put his hands up. He did not have a gun; he still hated them. “You’re—Jade Danziger,” he said, incredulous.

“Uh huh,” she said, looking more scared than Neal felt. “Why are you so surprised? I live here.”

“I know,” Neal answered. “I just—thought you’d be away with your mother. You don’t even have staff here.”

“My mother and I are not joined at the hip,” she retorted, “and I don’t need staff to survive. It’s not 1800.”

Neal nodded. “Fair enough. Will you put the gun down?”

Jade looked at him for a long moment. “I will if you tell me why you’re here and I believe you.”

Neal thought of several lies, but he didn’t go with any of them. “I’m here to take this painting back to the woman who rightfully owns it, whose family it was stolen from by the Nazis.”

“You’re Robin Hood, aren’t you?” Neal watched as Jade set the pistol down on a low table beside her and ran a hand through her tousled brown hair.

“He’s just a story,” Neal answered.

“A story with the face of one of the subjects in these classical paintings,” she shot back, staring openly at him. “There’s a rumor that you’re old.” She laughed.

Neal forced himself to stay silent, feeling just how much he was at the girl’s mercy and inwardly cursing his failure to verify the daughter’s whereabouts.

“All right,” she finally said, as if coming to a decision, “I’ll help you steal it.”

Out of all the ways Neal’s racing mind had imagined this going, this wasn’t even on the list. “But—why?”

Jade kept serious blue eyes on him. “Because my mother is a criminal, and I haven’t been able to do anything about it.”

Neal nodded his understanding. “I can’t disagree.” That was how he found himself loading a priceless painting into his car with a woman in plaid pajamas by his side. 

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Jade said. “Tomorrow I’m leaving to go back to my apartment in Paris. My mother won’t discover that the painting is missing for another week. When she does, I’ll play dumb like it happened while I wasn’t here.”

“Thank you,” said Neal, meaning it. He closed the car trunk and turned to his companion. 

“I’d like to help you catch her,” Jade said quickly. “Take her down.”

“Really?” Neal asked. “There’s a big difference between one painting and trying to put your mom away.”

“I know,” she answered. “I also know you have no reason to trust me right now. But I’ve seen my mother, over and over, take things, when she has plenty of money and connections to find out who the real owners are. I want to help you make sure it never happens again. Just—think about it, and when tonight stays a secret, you’ll know you can trust me. When you decide, contact me.”

Neal didn’t give a response, but she continued. “And thank you.”

“For what?” he asked, baffled.

“For taking this painting home and making one of my family’s wrongs right.” She stood on tiptoe and gave Neal a very quick hug. “That’s for if I never see you again,” she whispered. "Thank you, Robin Hood.” With that, she went back toward the house and disappeared inside. 

Neal blinked. There was something attractive about the idea of trying to take down Lucy Danziger and her repugnant business, but it was not his fight, and he was one man with a few associates. Then again, Jade. If she was for real, he had an in. It was certainly tantalizing, and it had been a long time since he had worked a case with a friend by his side.  
—

When Peter Burke got out of bed in the morning, he was still thinking of Neal. He’d only been awake a few minutes when his excited offspring burst into the living room. “Daddy! Daddy!” Peter opened his arms for the cyclone of arms and legs and playfully wrestled his son onto his lap. 

“What has you so excited today?” he asked.

“No school!” his son answered. “Not even on the computer.”

Normally, El had the more flexible job of the two of them. The FBI worked through blizzards and pandemics, but Peter’s dream still had him feeling sentimental. “El, I think I’ll take Neal today. The aquarium is back open. I’ll take the morning off, and you can have the afternoon.” Peter was rewarded with a hug from his overexcited son and a kiss from his wife. 

An hour and a half later, Peter and Neal were masked and handing over the ticketing fee. “Daddy, can we see the whales?” Neal was practically bobbing up and down in anticipation. 

“Of course,” Peter answered, grinning, “but keep hold of my hand.” Ordinarily, Peter would have let the seven-year-old have more freedom, but the bureau had intercepted an unusual amount of security threats during the pandemic, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

Father and son made their way through rooms with tanks of brightly-colored tropical fish, then into the large dolphin habitat. As usual, little Neal was quiet and observant. His father let him lead the way to each tank, where he stopped and watched quietly before moving on. 

Partway through the seal habitat, Peter’s phone vibrated. He kept hold of his son’s hand, but took the call because it was from the FBI. He listened to the case update from one of this agents, routine but important. He gave his approval for a budget increase and then ended the call.

“Okay, buddy, let’s go.” Peter started talking, then looked down. His son was nowhere to be found, and he realized with sudden dread that he had no idea at what point in the call Neal had let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may notice that Neal's encounter with Jade is similar to Peter O'Toole meeting Audrey Hepburn's character in the movie How to Steal a Million. This is an intentional homage and is inspired by it.


	3. The Paris Alley Irregulars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal goes to see his children, and Peter mobilizes the bureau to look for his missing son.

Peter pushed past a few people, but with distancing in place, the aquarium was far from full. He headed around a corner toward the whales, knowing that had been Neal’s most anticipated attraction and expecting to find his offspring there and ready to hear a piece of his mind. 

Except, Neal wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. Peter forced down his panic and did a systematic search. He hadn’t spent decades in the FBI for nothing. The most logical explanation was Neal hiding somewhere, maybe a place only a child could fit. Not really something Neal was likely to do, but children could be unpredictable, and Peter had learned to roll with the punches.

The bathroom, the touch tanks, even the souvenir shop yielded no sign of the little boy. At some point, an instinctive point, Peter’s brain shifted. This was no childish prank, and Neal did not like to be alone in unfamiliar places. He would have come out of hiding by now.

“Ma’am, I need you to lock down this facility.” Peter’s FBI ID was enough to get the ball rolling, but the sinking pit in his stomach suggested the action had come too late. There was no sign of Neal Burke in the building. Feeling almost like he was watching himself from faraway, Peter called in his own child as missing. He tried, and failed, to keep himself from jumping to worst-case scenarios.

He tried to call El. No answer. He left a message to call him back; this wasn’t something to text. Then, he left the aquarium and sped to the FBI. Waiting and doing nothing were out of the question.

—

The day after the Danziger job, Neal contemplated the painting in the front room of the Paris apartment. Stella was coming to fetch it, and he planned to unveil it from under a sheet, thinking she would appreciate a dramatic moment. 

After that, he would go see his children. Neal felt a pang of guilt over missing the previous night, though he’d left extra money with Gabriel to cover it. Neal’s kids were a group of ragtag children who were on their own on the streets of Paris. Their leader, Gabriel, kept them under a surprising amount of organized control, and sometimes they helped Neal get information from the streets or corners of the city that he couldn’t get by more conventional means. Neal had always paid them, but since lockdowns and the implementation of curfews, he’d forked over a small fortune for food and indoor shelter. Neal had always liked children, but this was more than that. He didn’t care that it cut into his bottom line. They were his kids, and he knew every one of them—their names, ages, and stories. He couldn’t fix all of their situations, but he could help keep them alive.

Stella arrived right on time, her steps absolutely sure as she came into the apartment. Neal offered his arm and walked her over to stand in front of the sheet-covered painting. “I’ve done a professional cleaning,” he explained, walking over to the piece. Stella didn’t answer until Neal had thrown off the covering to reveal Dante’s Paradise in all of its brightened glory. Even then, the old woman said nothing. Her only answer was to hug Neal fiercely for a long time, and he could feel her shaking with tears in his arms. 

—

Peter listened to El sob on the phone. He blamed himself for his son’s disappearance, and he was terrified that she would blame him, too. For the moment, he just listened to her crying out her shock and ached for the chance to hold his son. 

“I wish Caffrey was here,” he overheard somebody say as they passed through the office, “he was good at this kind of thing.’ As he finally finished his call, with El upset but calming, he agreed. He had no way to contact Neal and no idea where he was, but he needed his former CI and best friend’s lateral brain more than ever before. 

Director Lewis came by to offer sympathy and the help of the bureau, which Peter was already mobilizing. It was surreal. Suddenly, Peter could understand the irrational ways parents acted when their children were abducted. Logically, he knew everything was being done that could be. The museum was being scoured for clues, and alerts were being sent out everywhere for a child matching Neal’s description. Emotionally, he couldn’t help thinking through everything in his brain so many times he felt like he was going insane. Peter knew the stats; that was the problem. Six hours, ten, twelve. The longer time ticked by, the less likely it became that anyone would ever find Neal alive.

—

As soon as Neal approached the nondescript Paris alley he’d chosen for his nightly errand, he heard a low whistle, and the usual kids gathered out of doorways and shadows, seemingly materializing out of thin air. “Sorry I didn’t make it last night. I got held up,” he said in French to the oldest, Gabriel, who always went first. “I hope the extra was enough, and here’s a little more than usual for giving it out for me.” Neal handed him a wad of cash. “Now get inside; it’s almost curfew.” The kid nodded and disappeared into the night without a word. After that, they came one by one. As usual, Neal was amazed by their organization. They were quiet and didn’t push; a couple of them said thanks in soft voices. Gabriel and his assistants had a rough but effective order established among their peers on the street. 

Luke was one of the last, since he’d only started coming a couple of months before. Neal had a soft spot for him, so when it was his turn, he pulled out a Snickers bar along with cash. “Thought you might be missing American candy,” he said in English. Luke was American, a foreign exchange student who had flown the coop and ended up on the street. Finally, when the last in line, little Frances, had gotten her money—only a couple of dollars because he’d already given enough money to cover both of them to her older sister Lina—Neal turned to go. Frances tugged on his trouser leg, like she always did. Like always, he pretended to have forgotten, then turned back and swept her up into his arms with a laugh. “Be good for your sister,” he said, hugging her before handing her back to Lina.

Neal hurried back to his actual apartment, a secret location far from the one he used for meetings. He felt lighter after seeing the kids. He wished he could take care of them all, but he settled for being relieved that they looked well and weren’t hungry. And his nightly hug from Frances put a smile on his face that stayed there until he got home.

—

The search for Neal Burke, son of the FBI’s white collar division head, was done methodically. It was conducted as perfectly as any missing child investigation had ever been, because the whole bureau sympathized with one of its best-liked agents. But it revealed nothing.

As the wait got longer, Peter simply held El while she cried and was unspeakably relieved that she held him when he cried, staunchly refusing to blame him for something she said had obviously been orchestrated by someone with a plan that went beyond him being distracted for a couple of minutes.

“There’s no body,” Peter told himself every night. “He’s not gone until evidence proves otherwise.” And he prayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intentionally inspired by the Baker Street Irregulars.


	4. Searching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and the FBI continue to search for his missing son, and Neal decides to embark on a new adventure.

Agents monitored lines of communication day and night. Law enforcement agencies were alerted. No ransom request or demand arrived, not to the Burkes, the bureau, or anyone. This was one of the worst parts. No trace of Neal could be seen as a hopeful sign, but those hopes were offset by no clear indication of what the motive might have been for taking the little boy, which suggested the likelihood of a sick mind preying on a vulnerable child, rather than a methodical operation.

What Peter did not know, let alone anyone else involved in the search, was that there had been a plan, one that had been meticulously set into motion from months earlier. However, the best-laid plans had been thwarted—by a little boy who shared the name of one of the greatest living escape artists of the modern era.

—  
Neal spent a quiet week thinking about the offer he’d received from the girl in plaid pajamas. He helped a wrongfully-accused man find an attorney who would defend him for free and tracked down a woman’s deadbeat husband. Usual things. Good, helpful things. But routine things. They did not excite him.

At times like this, Neal missed the FBI. Working with his freedom on the line had been, in some ways, terrible, but working with Peter had been wonderful. Neal still recalled how Peter had taken the tedious tasks himself, how he had maintained his stern outward facade while quietly shifting the most exciting tasks to Neal, the ones most likely to keep his interest and help him not to stray. Neal had always been thankful for this unspoken kindness, but now he appreciated it more than ever, now that he was the boss and the boring tasks fell to him. 

He called Jade Danziger almost exactly one week after the successful theft of her mother’s painting, a theft that had not been reported to the official police or to any underground enforcement agencies. She had kept her word, and it seemed her mother had not yet even noticed the theft, her big house still standing empty, now with its security back on as if nothing had happened. 

He had no trouble finding her information, even though it wasn’t listed publicly. Of course, she had intended that as a puzzle for him by not giving him any way to contact her. She’d asked for a call, and he complied with her wishes to prove that he had easily met her challenge.  
“Robin Hood?” She answered the call from his encrypted phone, and he was relieved.   
“You can call me Neal.”  
“Is that your actual name?”  
“Maybe. I’m ready to meet and discuss next steps.”  
“It’s about time.” She sounded delighted. Neal gave her the address of his meeting apartment.  
“6:00 p.m. tomorrow. Will you come?”  
“Wouldn’t miss it.”  
He would have preferred to meet her at a restaurant. A small Paris cafe would have had the perfect ambiance, but in the world of masks and sanitizer, the best he could do was a meeting on his own turf.   
Neal had an extra spring in his step that night as he headed to the alley. He was finally giving in to the urge to do something new, something risky, something that would take his ingenuity to pull off. His excitement crackled.

—

“Can I add something?” Peter was not the lead agent on his son’s case, and he recognized the prudence of that decision. Still, he insisted on sitting in on all status meetings, and he offered input.

“Go ahead,” said Fortnum, who had been put in charge because she had experience in locating missing children.

“I know we’re all thinking that the lack of demands means an opportunistic predator, somebody who saw Neal at the aquarium and grabbed him. But I don’t buy it.” He leaned forward in his chair, glad to have the attention of the task force. “I was distracted for a minute or two at most. It just wasn’t long enough for somebody to decide on the spot, take my son, and get away, if there was no plan. Why didn’t he scream, how did they get out of there so fast, and how would they have exactly avoided security surveillance if it was a momentary crime of opportunity? It was too quick, too perfect. There had to be a plan, a getaway car, more people involved. And—I get it. I know it doesn’t make sense because they haven’t communicated. But I still don’t believe a small-time criminal could be that efficient.”  
Fortnum nodded. “Point taken, Agent Burke. I hope we’re all aware that just because something doesn’t fit what we expect, that doesn’t mean we rule out any possibilities. We’re going to keep going until we get an answer.”

Peter appreciated her straightforward seriousness and her efficiency. He left the meeting with all of his questions still swirling in his head. He had years of experience of catching both organized criminals and opportunistic creeps. Every intuition he had was telling him Neal had been abducted by the first type. It didn’t exactly comfort him, but it did suggest that maybe—just maybe—there was hope that his son was still alive, still an intended pawn in somebody’s master plan.

—

When Neal got to the alley, Gabriel stepped forward as usual, but he was holding the hand of a small child Neal had never seen before. The kid was dirty and pale, wearing a red hoodie and jeans that had dirt and stains all over them. He thought he detected what looked like a bruise that was healing on the little boy’s right cheek.

“New kid,” Gabriel said. “Showed up this morning. Won’t tell us who he is. He doesn’t speak French. Luke has been talking to him in English, but he won’t tell us his name or anything about where he came from or why he’s here. We can’t keep him; he’s too young to be out here without siblings, and we don’t want to get mixed up in Americans looking for a missing kid. We don’t want any police around.”

Neal nodded. Gabriel’s group was primarily made up of older kids nobody wanted or who had been mistreated by their guardians. Any under ten had an older sibling or cousin. They had no capacity to care for a child who looked somewhere, Neal thought, between five and eight, especially one who was traumatized and wouldn’t tell them anything. “Here, give this out, and I’ll take him,” Neal said, handing Gabriel the evening’s money. 

When the older boy had turned away to pass out the allowance, Neal knelt down to the level of the wide-eyed little boy. “Hi,” he said in English, “I’m Mr. Smith,” which was the alias he always used with the children. He had every intention of taking the child with him, but he didn’t want to do it against his will and traumatize him even further. “It’s nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

The small boy watched him for a long moment without saying anything. “You look just like my Uncle Neal,” were the first words out of his mouth.


	5. The Namesake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal realizes exactly who he's looking after, and the Burkes wish they had a way to get in touch with the one man they think can help them.

About a thousand things flooded Neal's mind at once. He had been focusing on the evident markers of bad treatment the boy appeared to have suffered judging by the condition of his clothes and face. He now realized just how much the eyes staring quietly into his looked like Elizabeth Burke’s and how much the set of the narrow shoulders reminded him of Peter.

Neal was glad Gabriel was occupied with the other children and that none of them seemed to be paying any attention. “What are your mom's and dad’s names?” he asked as gently as he could manage, but the boy shook his head.

“How about,” Neal tried again, “if I say your mom’s name and get it right, you tell me your dad’s?”

The serious-eyed boy slowly nodded. “Okay,” Neal said, trying to speak slowly and not make any alarming movements. “Your mom’s name is Elizabeth Burke.”

“My dad is FBI Special Agent Peter Burke,” the little boy said very softly. 

For a split second, Neal entertained the wild idea of some kind of scam involving training a fake child to pretend to be the Burkes’ to somehow trap him, but that didn’t make any kind of sense, and even the smartest kid this young couldn’t be trained to do that. As bizarre as it was, he was looking into the face of the child he had never known.

“Your name is Neal Burke,” Neal answered, “and you were named after me.”

Neal saw his own confusion reflected on the face of his namesake. He held out his hand. “I’m your uncle. You can trust me, okay?” He needed to move quickly, but he didn’t want to startle the little boy. This was now complicated, confusing in so many ways that he needed time to sort out, not in a Paris alley surrounded by children who thought he was named Jim Smith. 

He didn’t know how far the trust went, but at least little Neal grasped his hand. He stood up and yelled back to Gabriel. “Gabe, I have to go. Taking the new kid with me. Give Frances a hug from me and tell her I’ll be back tomorrow.” With that, Neal Caffrey turned toward home, lightly pulling Neal Burke alongside him. 

Neal didn’t say anything until they were out of earshot, into the darkening Paris evening. “Hey, kid,” he said. “I’m glad to finally meet you.” 

Little Neal looked up at him. “You’re not going to take me back to the bad men, right?”

“No,” Neal said, a pit of dread starting in his stomach at the thought of what the boy might be remembering. “You’re safe now, and nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

“Okay,” said the boy, as if that sealed the deal, and Neal felt the small hand in his squeeze a little tighter.

“Hey, you’ve probably been walking a lot,” Neal said. “Do you want me to pick you up?”

The kid shook his head no. “I can walk.” Too much too soon, Neal figured, inwardly kicking himself. 

“When we get home, we can eat. Are you hungry?”

“Uh huh.”

The words “Uncle Neal” had caught him off guard at first, but, looking down at the Burkes’ child, Neal felt like it was already taking hold. This kid, a curious combination of two people he loved so dearly, might as well have been his flesh and blood. He was ready to do anything to protect him—and he felt his blood rise at the thought of whoever had caused him to be alone and in his current condition. 

“So—what did your parents tell you about me?” Neal asked, hoping to get the boy to keep talking and maybe open up.

“My mom said you’re a hero, and my dad showed me pictures of you and him from a long time ago, before I was born. They said they named me after you so I would grow up to be like you.” Neal suddenly looked very hard at a building on the side of the street, not wanting his namesake to see the sudden wetness in his eyes. 

“Neal,” said the older to the younger, “do you think you can talk to me about what happened—how you got here?” Hard shake of the head no, and the little boy clung to his hand even tighter.

“That’s okay,” Neal sighed. “You’re okay now. You can tell me later, if you feel like it.” 

“I’m sorry,” said the kid, very softly.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Neal said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He went silent after that, not wanting to upset the little boy any further, his mind going a mile a minute. He needed to let Peter and Elizabeth Burke know their son was safe. He didn’t for one moment think Neal would be in this predicament if they had any idea where he was. The implication was abduction, but without any information from the little boy, he had nothing to go on. He was even scared to try to contact the Burkes. What if whoever had taken Neal was targeting them? They might even be in danger now. He was immensely glad that Mozzie was expected back in Paris this night. He needed his friend to help untangle the web and figure out what to do next, especially while the boy was too scared to tell him anything.

—

“Hon,” asked El, after another sad, lackluster lunch, “do you have any way to get in touch with Neal, to see if he can help?”

“I’ve tried,” Peter answered, “but he has a seven-year head start this time.”

El leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. “I know he’d want to help if he knew.”

“I’ll try Mozzie’s last known contact information,” Peter answered, “but you know Mozzie. He’ll be long gone.”

The frustrating thing was, they had intentionally kept the case out of the news. Abduction experts had told them that too much media attention might make whoever had taken Neal decide to get rid of him, to eliminate the complication of hiding him. If they thought nobody knew what had happened, they might feel safer, be more likely to hang onto him. Peter had agreed, and he’d convinced Elizabeth. The flip side was, they got no leads from the public, and if Neal or Mozzie might be keeping tabs on news from the United States, they wouldn’t have seen anything.

Usually, Peter believed that deciding not to chase Neal had been the right decision. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

—

Neal kept hold of his namesake’s hand and unlocked the door one-handed. The boy was still holding onto him with a vice grip. “We’re home,” Neal said, “and it’s safe.” He led the child inside, and he was pleased to smell something cooking.

“Moz, you here?” he called. “We have company.”

Mozzie emerged into the front living room, wearing an apron. “Got in an hour ago. What the—“ He looked at little Neal for a few moments. “That’s the Burke kid. I haven’t seen him since he was three, but I would recognize those eyes anywhere.” He gave Neal a “What in the world is going on?” look, but read the room enough not to ask difficult questions out loud. “Good to see you again, Neal. I’m Mozzie, but you probably don't remember me.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are,” the kid said very quietly. 

“That’s okay,” Mozzie answered. “I’m like a cool uncle.”

For the first time, Neal saw a faint second of amusement cross the little boy’s face and a near-smile. Neal grinned down at him. “I think he knows which one of us is the cool uncle. What’s for dinner?”

Mozzie led the way to the kitchen, and Neal figured getting food into the kid was more important than anything else to start with. 

—

One of the bedtime stories Neal Burke’s parents had told him ever since he could remember was about his name and Uncle Neal, the uncle who had helped his daddy catch bad guys at the FBI and then given his life to save them. Except, just like a real superhero, his uncle hadn’t really died. He had come back to life. His mother always told him Uncle Neal was away somewhere, very far, doing things a hero does. 

When he’d turned seven, Neal had asked his father if his uncle was actually real, or if he was just a story like Santa Claus, whom he’d just stopped believing in. His father had pulled him into his lap and shown him a special picture album that he’d never seen before, pictures of his parents with another man. That man, his daddy told him, was Uncle Neal, and they missed him very much. 

Four months later, Neal was tucked into bed by the man in those photos. He was tired and confused, sore from the bruises he’d gotten. Somehow, meeting Uncle Neal made sense. Superheroes came when you needed help, didn’t they? 

“Neal, I’m going to be right out there in the living room. If you need me, you call, okay?” His uncle was standing over him, smoothing his hair across his forehead. It felt good, comforting, like nothing he’d felt since the aquarium. 

“Okay,” he answered. His uncle turned out the light, and Neal turned over and leaned into the quilt and stuffed llama his uncle had given him to hold. He was finally somewhere comfortable, and he wasn’t hungry. He drifted off to sleep almost instantly.

The next thing he knew, he was back in the plane, feeling the wheels lift off, screaming because he knew they were taking him away from his parents, and a big man in a mask was holding his arms so hard it hurt. He yelled as loud as he could.

“Hey, hey, Neal, it’s okay.” The little boy felt himself being lightly shaken and jolted awake, realizing he was in bed in his uncle’s house in Paris, wrapped in a blanket, and nobody was hurting him. For the first time all week, Neal Burke started crying. 

Big arms picked him up. Big arms pulled him close, and he closed his eyes against his uncle’s shoulder. “It’s okay, you’re safe. Nothing bad is going to happen,” he heard his uncle say as he carried him out to the living room and sat with him on the sofa. Neal felt like he would never be able to stop crying. His uncle just held him in his lap, with his arms wrapped tightly around him, for ages and ages, until he finally started to calm down.  
—

“You were pretty good with the kid just now,” Mozzie said, once little Neal was back to sleep, and the two could strategize alone.

Neal shrugged. “I just did exactly what I wished somebody would have done for me when I was a kid.”

Mozzie patted his shoulder. “What exactly are we going to do about this, my friend? 

Neal ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I have no idea, Moz. I checked the newswires, and nobody is reporting the abduction of the son of the head of the FBI’s white collar division. Don’t you think that would make the news?”

It was Mozzie’s turn to shrug. “Maybe they kept it out on purpose, but this is making me think I should have kept that surveillance on the Burkes. I let it go two years ago.”

“It’s okay,” Neal answered. “We’ll get to the answer; we just need the kid to feel safe enough to tell us what happened, and we can go from there.”

“Judging by tonight, it won’t be long,” Mozzie commented with uncharacteristic optimism. “He idolizes you.”

Neal couldn’t help smiling. “Who would have thought—Peter Burke raised his kid to think of me as a hero.”

“The Suit’s not a total idiot,” Mozzie answered.


	6. Escalation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter seeks a late-night distraction, and Neal goes further into the Danziger case.

Neal went out early, to buy food from the his favorite market, something a kid would hopefully eat. He would have asked what little Neal liked, but he was still sleeping, and after the difficulties of the night, it was a relief. Neal left Mozzie to babysit.

The area around the market wasn’t crowded, since people were mostly abiding by lockdowns unless they had critical reasons to be out. Neal was dressed casually, and though he was used to his face attracting attention, from behind a mask it wasn’t quite as striking.

“Hey—Neal?”

That brought him up short on his way into the store. He didn’t use the name “Neal” in Paris, even though he still preferred it to his aliases. He whirled around, ready to defend himself, wondering which of the misdeeds of his prior life had caught up to him.

Instantly, his adrenaline ebbed. Jade Danziger was next to the fresh produce. This time, her hair was pulled back, and she was dressed for the day in slacks and a sweater, but even in a mask, he recognized her. The one person in Paris he’d told to call him “Neal.”

Her eyes looked frantic as he approached. “What’s wrong?” He kept his voice low. “How did you even find me?” She had enough sense to go outside to talk, and Neal followed.

“I’ve been walking around this area for an hour,” she explained in a breathless voice, once they were out front of the market. “It’s close to the address you gave me, and I hoped you might be around here.”

“You were lucky,” he said, not elaborating because he did not want to explain that he lived in a different part of the city. “What do you need that couldn’t wait for tonight?”

“Can we meet now—somewhere private?” she asked. Neal could tell that she was genuinely upset, so he nodded and led the way toward his meeting apartment, which was a ten-minute walk. Along the way, he texted Mozzie to tell him he was going to be a while, to order in something for the kid to eat, whatever he wanted. 

“I’m—sorry,” Jade said when they were about halfway. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Neal had no idea, as of yet, what she was even talking about, but he lightly touched her shoulder. “If this relates to what we talked about the other night, then you did the right thing coming to me.”

She nodded. “It—does.”

They spent the rest of the walk in silence, and Neal wondered what could have rattled the self-possessed woman to this extent. Even finding a stranger ransacking her house hadn’t shaken her up half as much. 

—

Peter couldn’t sleep. He left El with a peaceful expression she never wore during the day any more and went out to the living room. He had checked and re-checked everything related to his son’s disappearance, so, not knowing what else to do, he picked up a file he had brought home from the case he was supposed to have started looking into just as his world had exploded.

Preliminary report: Art theft. That made him think of Neal, the original one. Except, this had a nasty edge to it that Caffrey never would have pursued. Somebody was profiting off other people’s tragedies. Peter’s superiors had handed the file over so that he could form a team to figure out what federal US laws were being violated and how to go about proving it. 

The name caught his eye, because he remembered years before when he’d looked into the business practices of an oil millionaire, who actually, it turned out, had been completely clean. Danziger, an American expat living in Paris on her deceased husband’s money, and, it seemed, doing a lot more than that. 

For a few minutes, Peter’s mind was distracted by reading about the compiled details, but the problem was immediately apparent. They just didn’t have that much yet. He could smell shady dealings a mile away, but the case wasn’t anywhere near proof. 

—

When Neal Burke woke up, there was light streaming through the windows, and he immediately remembered that he was at his Uncle Neal’s, not with the bad men or on the street with the kids he hadn’t been able to talk to. He got out of bed and walked out to the living room, dressed in the slightly too-big pajamas his uncle had given him. At least his uncle had kid clothes at all; Neal was happy to be out of the hoodie and jeans he now hated. 

“Morning,” said Mozzie, who was sitting on the sofa reading a newspaper. Neal thought he liked the small man who apparently knew his parents. 

“Good morning, Mr. Mozzie. Where’s Uncle Neal?”

“He went out for a while, but if you tell me what you want for breakfast, I’ll order it for you.” Neal’s anxiety came back full force. What if his uncle wasn’t coming back for him? What if he was going to end up back with the bad men after all? He had thought he could trust his uncle, but he did not know about Mozzie. Now he wasn’t sure about either of them.

“Hey, kid, he just ran an errand,” Mozzie said, getting up and coming toward him. “He’ll be back.”

“I want my mom and dad,” Neal said.

“I get it,” Mozzie answered, “and that’s going to happen, just as soon as Uncle Neal and I can make sure it’s safe.”

Neal went back to the bedroom, which was normally his uncle’s, and got back in bed. He pulled the blanket over his head and held the stuffed llama. He didn’t want to be scared any more, but it seemed like everywhere he went just ended up being another place to be afraid.

—

Neal unlocked his secondary apartment and led Jade inside. “Welcome,” he said shortly. “I’d planned to at least have dinner ordered for our meeting tonight.”

“No need,” she answered. “Can I sit?”

“Sure.”

This was not the meeting Neal had envisioned, where the suave and charming Robin Hood would outline an airtight plan with the help of an intelligent woman. Instead, he felt off his game, and at the same time he empathized with Jade’s obvious distress.

She took off her mask, and he did the same, sitting in the chair across from the sofa, while she perched on the edge of the larger piece of furniture, looking small and vulnerable in comparison with it. 

“Something is really, really wrong,” she said. “You must know my mother hasn’t discovered the painting is gone yet; I’m sure you’ve been paying attention. Normally, when she’s gone, she calls the staff back to the house a couple of days ahead of time, but the caretaker called me three days ago and said he hadn’t even heard from her. She’s—she was supposed to be back at the house this morning.”

“Missing?” Neal wondered aloud.

Jade shook her head no. “It’s not that. I called her yesterday. We’re not as close as we used to be, but she trusts me. She knows I know what she does, and even though I’ve never supported it, I’m nearly thirty, and I’ve never done anything about it, either. I called her and asked if she was coming back from her vacation soon, said I wanted to see her. I played dumb, like I didn’t know anything was weird.”

“Neal, she—I’ve never heard her like that. She said—‘Jade, something’s happened, and I don’t know if I’ll be back for a while. The house is yours, and you know how to access the family accounts.’”

“Do you think she got onto the fact that you’d decided to work against her?” Neal asked the obvious question.

Jade shook her head vehemently. “No, even I didn’t know it until I met you the other night, and I’ve never discussed it with anyone else. I’m—not finished. I tried to keep her on the phone. I said, ‘Are you okay, mom?’ I was trying to play the concerned daughter card, and, I mean, it wasn’t that far off reality.”

“She sounded so weird. My mother is never anxious, and she sounded like she was on the verge of panic. She said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Jade. You’re better off not know anything. Somebody I hired made a big mistake, and I don’t know if I can clean it up.’”

“Neal, I’m—I think she might be responsible for somebody getting killed, or something. Maybe I sound insane, but I know my mom. I’ve never heard her like this in my life.”

Neal thought quickly. “Do you think she would talk to you again? Right now, you’re our only link to finding out the truth.”

“I—I guess. She didn’t say she wouldn’t.”

Neal nodded. “We need to find out what happened. If your mother is mixed up in something, you could be in danger, too.”

“I know,” Jade answered readily. “That’s one of the reasons I looked for you. Probably pretty cowardly, right? If I’m going to be a big, bad informant, I need to get used to it.”

Neal shook his head. “You’re trying to do a good thing, and you’ve gotten mixed up in whatever escalated your mom’s situation. One thing I know, big crimes don’t go unreported. But it would be easier if you could find out faster. Do you know where she is?”

Jade shook her head. “She had reservations at a Caribbean resort, but those expired three days ago.”

“We’ll work on finding out. You can stay here,” Neal said. “It has good security, and nobody your mother has ever worked with should have any reason to think you would be here.”

“Okay,” Jade answered. “That’s extremely nice of you.”

Neal looked at her for a long moment. “This is because I’m concerned for you, but also because I don’t fully trust you.”

“Understood,” she answered. “But still, thanks."

—

Neal finally reached home more than two hours after he’d left. When he unlocked the apartment, he found Mozzie reading in the living room, but his namesake was nowhere in sight. 

“The kid won’t come out,” Mozzie said shortly. “I tried to get breakfast, but he just went back in there, and I was afraid to push. Apparently, I don’t have Uncle Neal’s kid whisperer abilities.”

Neal shook his head. “This is my fault. I planned to be back before he woke up. He’s traumatized, Moz. He woke up, and the person he thought was finally going to keep him safe wasn’t here. I get it.”  
He did get it. He’d felt it, on more than one occasion, throughout a childhood in witness protection that had been chaotic at best and terrifying at worst. That he’d felt the same sense of terror and abandonment once again the day his father had threatened him as an adult? He’d never told anyone that, but it certainly filled his mind as he knocked lightly on his bedroom door and came inside.

“Hey, buddy,” he sat on the end of the bed, not touching little Neal or trying to remove the blanket that completely covered him. “Did you fall back asleep? I thought we could eat something. I’m really hungry.”

“Go away,” the kid said. “I want my dad.”

“I do, too,” Neal said, and he’d never said anything truer in his life. “He always knows what to do and how to keep people safe, doesn’t he.”

Neal the younger peeked out from under his blanket. “You left.”

“Yep, I went to get food for breakfast, and then I got stuck and couldn’t get back right away. That must have been scary. I’m sorry I left you with Moz without telling you I was going to.”

“That’s—okay,” the little boy finally said, sitting up and scooting closer to Neal, who dared to reach an arm around him and was relieved when he didn’t pull away.

“You know, I’m going to take care of you until you get your parents back. I promise,” Neal said.

“I’m sorry I told you to go away,” the kid whispered, wrapping his thin arms around Neal’s middle. 

“I’ve heard a lot worse,” Neal said, suddenly swinging him up into the air and making him laugh in surprise. “Come out and eat something, or your mother will accuse me of starving you.”

\--

Peter was finally settling back in for the night when his phone beeped. He picked up, and the call was Director Lewis himself. "Hey, Burke, sorry for the late hour, but we thought you'd want to know. Anonymous tip came in about an overheard conversation--botched kidnapping. Something didn't go as planned. We haven't connected it yet. I'll let you know when I know more."


	7. Everything He Could

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter hopes, and Neal gets more information.

Neal had arranged to see Jade again in the evening. They both agreed that calling her mother too incessantly might backfire and cause her to cut contact. Still, Neal’s impatience was at full force. If this was a dead end, he wanted to know so he could course correct and not waste precious time while he had Peter Burke’s only child and an apparent abduction to solve at the same time.

In the meantime, Neal poured his small namesake a bowl of cereal, hoping the little boy might soon be willing to open up with something—anything—to help him know where to begin. He had no idea how long an intelligent seven-year-old could hold out. If they made him feel as safe as possible, Neal hoped it wouldn’t be long. 

“Mr. Mozzie?” said the kid, looking up from the kitchen table at Neal’s bespectacled associate’s toast making endeavors.

“At your service, Miniature Neal,” Mozzie answered.

“I’m sorry I was impolite.”

“That’s—okay,” said Mozzie, stepping over and awkwardly ruffling the little boy’s brown hair before looking over at Neal, who wore a look of deep amusement. “Definitely raised by the Burkes,” Mozzie added. “You can practically smell the lawfulness on him. Maybe this is how you would’ve turned out if Mr. And Mrs. Suit had gotten to you sooner.”

“Never,” said Neal, sitting down next to the little boy with his slice of buttered toast. “He’s way too good for me.”

“I’m not that good.” The statement out of little Neal’s mouth, intoned between bites of sugar cereal, was so emphatic and matter-of-fact that both Mozzie and Neal just stared at him for a second.

“Why do you say that?” Neal asked, following a hunch that this might turn important and wanting the kid to keep talking.

“I got taken by the bad men because I didn’t do what my dad said.” Neal had definitely not expected this to be his opening to glean the information he was sorely lacking, but he was willing to take it. 

“Where was that, Neal?” He spoke calmly and evenly, not wanting the kid to feel pressured.

“At that aquarium. I wanted to see the whales, but my dad got a phone call, and I let go, so they took me away.” Aquarium. Neal immediately knew which one, the only one of any size that was anywhere near where the Burkes lived. 

“Do you remember what day that was?” Neal asked, hoping beyond hope for a time frame.

The little boy just shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

“That’s okay,” Neal murmured absently, the wheels of his mind turning. This was a straightforward abduction, then. Father and son out together, Peter momentarily distracted by his call, and his impatient son wandering away where he made a prime target. But what was the motive for taking Neal Burke specifically? It seemed overly coincidental that anyone would have kidnapped the son of the head of white collar on accident.

“Uncle Neal?” The little boy’s quiet voice pulled Neal out of his reverie, and he was reminded that he had a very real and still-traumatized child on his hands. “Do—do you think my dad is mad at me for letting go of his hand?”

Letting go of his hand. Neal’s mind did a quick-fire montage of all the times he’d metaphorically let go of Peter’s hand over the years to go do something far worse than chasing whales. He smiled and put his hand on his namesake’s head, subconsciously mimicking what Peter had once done to him at one of his most vulnerable moments. “No, Neal, he’s not mad. He loves you too much to be mad, and he just wants you to be safe.”

“How do you know?” the little boy asked, turning wide blue eyes onto Neal, all the force of seven-year-old guilt on the line. 

“Well,” Neal thought quickly, “what does your dad hate more than anything in the world?”

“Stealing,” the little boy answered immediately.

“He definitely knows his father,” Mozzie said drily from across the table.

“Back when I used to catch bad guys with your dad, I was a bad guy sometimes. Sometimes I even stole things.” 

“You did?” The kid looked incredulous at this shifting portrait of his hero uncle, and Neal thought that trying to explain gray areas of adult ethics to a child was not something he’d really signed up for.

“I did,” he nodded, “and—even though your dad wasn’t happy about it, he still loved me and did everything he could to protect me. That’s how I know.” 

Neal the younger was obviously satisfied by this. “Okay,” he said. “Did you get grounded a lot?” Mozzie’s snicker threatened to become a full-blown laughing fit. 

“Yeah,” Neal answered, visions of a tracking anklet dancing in his head, “a lot.”

“But my dad said you’re a hero?” The little boy was perplexed, and Neal didn’t blame him.

“Your dad and your mom—taught me how to be one,” Neal finally said. “And they helped me believe I could be.”

“Oh,” said the kid, lapsing into silence.

—

“You’re acting weird,” El said as she set the breakfast dishes on the table. “I mean, weirder than usual for right now.” Peter finished tying his tie, but instead of sitting down at the table, he reached for her and pulled her close in the middle of the kitchen. 

“Oh no,” she said, suddenly tensing. “Did you—is there bad news? Just tell me.”

“No, hon,” Peter said, hugging her against him, “I just didn’t want to get your hopes up in case it turns out to be nothing. Lewis has a lead, our first one.”

El put her arms around his waist and pressed herself more tightly against him. “He’s alive, Peter. I would know if he wasn’t.” Peter knew all the stats and all the probabilities. Even so, he let himself borrow El’s hope for his own. 

—

Neal and Mozzie employed the oldest babysitting trick in the book and put the kid in front of cartoons in the living room. That allowed them to work at the larger dining room table and still keep an eye on him.

For the first order of business, Neal explained the Jade Danziger situation. His friend gave him exactly the look he expected. “You have got to be kidding me, Neal. You’re supposed to be a conman, not the one who gets conned.”

“I think we can trust her, Moz,” he answered. “I believe she actually wants to help.”

“Well, we’re stuck with her anyway,” said his friend, none too graciously. “But right now, in order of severity, I’d say having a kidnapped child in the living room is probably our worst problem.”

“But nobody seems to even know there was an abduction. Why hasn’t it flagged on any of your surveillance? Somebody should be taking credit for it.”

Mozzie shrugged. “Well, somehow he got away. That might be a big enough problem that nobody wants to mention it. Unless you think they let him go on purpose, and this is some kind of long con.”

Neal shook his head. “I went down that road when I first found him. There’s no way. He’s not old enough to be trained, and there’s nothing like a tracker on him.”

“Escaped, then,” said Mozzie. “Respect to the kid.”

“His father is a genius,” Neal said.

“True,” Mozzie agreed, “but such wasted application of all that talent. There’s still time for the young one to choose the free life.”

Neal laughed. “Nah, he’s Peter and El’s kid, and that’s enough.”

—

Later that night, Neal left his namesake (who was fine since Neal's return was promised) with Mozzie and took a different route than usual to get to his second apartment. He wasn’t being followed, but he took precautions. Despite his insistence to the contrary, he’d taken Mozzie’s concerns to heart and decided to be careful.

When he arrived, he mentally prepared himself for Jade to be gone without a word. Instead, he found her sitting on the sofa in silence, without the TV or any other device on. She turned to him, and he saw that she looked even more worried than before.

“Neal!”

“Are you okay?”

“My—mother called me. I did just what you said. I acted like nothing was up. I just got her talking and started asking questions.”

“Good,” Neal said, sitting down opposite the girl to take in her breathless barrage of words. “She—she was evasive for a while, but then she started talking again about how things weren’t looking good and she didn’t know when she would be back. So I told her I was worried, and I asked why.” Neal leaned forward, engrossed.

“Neal, she—said she had hired a man to make a problem go away, and he kidnapped a kid, but by the time he told her the plan, the kid had escaped. A little kid, like seven. He’s out on the street. They’re going to try to pin it on my mother if anything gets found out, but I don’t care. I just can’t stop thinking about that poor kid on his own out there.”

Neal’s mind raced. “Do you know who the kid is, or why kidnapping him would make anyone’s problems disappear?”

Jade shook her head no. “She was still panicky. I couldn’t get more than that.”

“Good work,” Neal said. “I brought you some groceries.”

“Thanks,” Jade answered, but she made no effort to move from the couch.

“You must be hungry,” Neal said. 

“Not really,” she answered. “This is all—really weird. I mean, I know my mom has done some bad things, but not like this. My—whole life is changing. I’m scared.”

“I get it,” Neal answered, “but you still need to eat.” When she still didn’t move, Neal went to the kitchen and started water for pasta.

“You cook?” The girl finally joined him after several silent minutes.

“When needed,” Neal answered. 

“Why are you being this nice to me?” Jade asked. “Don’t you have hundreds of other people in Paris with easier problems to solve? When I told you I wanted to help take her down, I had no idea it would turn into this. I’m—sorry.”

“Apology unnecessary,” Neal answered, chopping pancetta. “I’ve always appreciated a challenge.”


	8. Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal starts to put two-and-two together through a conversation with Jade Danziger.
> 
> TW: This chapter contains references to child abuse, not graphic.

Neal quickly finished the one-dish pasta and put it on the table with plates. Not exactly glamorous, but not bad for improvisation. He pulled out one of the chairs from around the small table, the only table he kept in an apartment not meant for living in, and motioned to Jade. “Dinner is served.”

The girl gave him a wry look but sat down. “Thanks for this.”

“Don’t thank me too soon,” Neal answered. “Full disclosure; I connected to your phone this morning. My associate now has a recording of the call with your mother from this afternoon, and he’s analyzing it to get any information he can. I needed to know if we could actually trust you. Not—looking at anything else on your phone, honestly.”

Jade didn’t answer for a while, but she finally looked at him and nodded. “I can’t say I like it, but I understand. I’m the one who came to you. You could have just asked me, though. I would have recorded my calls and given them to you.”

“You would have still been in control,” Neal explained straightforwardly. “We needed to know, fast, without you being able to manipulate what we got.”

“Okay,” she said, picking up her fork. “I’m hungry now.”

Neal smiled, surprised by how well she’d taken it, then turned serious again. “What you need to know is, these recordings will be enough. She already admitted to you that she hired the person who did this. If you talk to her and get her to say any more, it will strengthen the case. She'll face charges bigger than art theft, and they may be from more than one country.”

“More than one country?” Jade echoed. “What do you know?”

“I’m not sure about the connection yet,” said Neal, “but I may know something about the abduction from other sources.” He did not mention that his main source was a seven-year-old who was currently eating pizza in his apartment on the other side of the city.

“Do it,” Jade said simply. “Help me take her all the way down.”

“Why?” Neal asked, finally starting on his own dinner. “I don’t buy the idea that you just want to do a good deed. You’re grown. You have a nice life. Lucy has been doing this, at least in some capacity, for years. Why now?”

Jade tensed. “First of all, I’m not living off her money. I have a trust from my father. Yeah, I’m a trust fund baby, but at least it’s money my dad earned honestly. Proven honest by the US government.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “The FBI investigated him when I was a kid and didn’t find anything, said he was 100% above board.”

“That had to be fun,” Neal said, matching her tone. “I have some experience with them.”

“I bet you do,” she answered. “It probably could have been worse. We got a nice agent. This was back when we still lived in the States. He didn’t try to invent anything to pin on Dad, and he was always nice. The whole thing sucked, but he did his job. It was one of his first cases as a lead.”

“Peter Burke,” said Neal, and he was rewarded by Jade dropping her fork and nearly knocking over her wine glass.

“How the heck do you know that? Are you working with them?”

Neal immediately raised his arms in surrender. “No—no way. They don’t want me, believe me. I just—made some deductions. I’m familiar with Agent Burke’s work.”

“Well, he’s a good guy; at least, he used to be. Let me watch cartoons on his laptop while he interviewed my parents, and when he closed the case, he came by personally to apologize for taking up dad’s time on something that turned out to be a false lead. None of the others were like that.”

“Sounds like Peter,” Neal mused.

“You know him,” Jade said, leaning forward.

“Yeah,” Neal agreed, deciding in the moment that he wanted to be honest with her. “A few years ago, we worked together. I wasn’t—in the FBI. I had an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?” she pressed.

“The kind where you either help the FBI or stay in jail.”

“So that’s where you came from,” she said. “This mythical Robin Hood who rose out of the Paris sewers to fight for justice, or whatever it is they say.”

“I’m just a guy,” Neal said.

“But a guy who made a deal with Peter Burke. From what I remember, that can’t have been easy. He always seemed like he played by the rules.”

“Strictly,” said Neal, smiling, “Exactly like the guy you met; I was just a few years later.”

“I wish,” Jade said after a few moments of silence, “that Agent Burke could be the one who gets my mom’s case if it extends to the States. I would trust him.”

“I’d say that’s doable,” Neal said, thinking about all the tangled fibers of the multiple cases that now appeared to be spun off parts of the same thing. “I’d say it’s pretty unavoidable that he’ll be involved.” He didn’t say more, unwilling to disclose until he was sure of what he’d begun to suspect.

They both ate in silence for a few moments, then Neal started again. “You still haven’t answered my question: Why?”

Jade got a dark look in her eyes. “I was close to my father. Before he died, he took me everywhere, all over the world. He said I could be anything I wanted to be. I don’t know how far you’ve looked into me, but that’s why I majored in history. I’m an expert in artifacts of pre-literate cultures. I write books. Of course, you can’t make great money doing that, but I have the trust. My father never judged me for being a nerd or staying home reading while other kids went out. He made it so I could study what I loved. I was fifteen when he died, and my best friend was gone.”

“My mom was different. I don’t know how else to say it. They only had one kid, and she wanted me to be perfect. I didn’t do all the things regular kids did. When we moved to France, I couldn’t adjust, and it made her endlessly angry. She would lock me in my room so nobody saw me when they had parties. I didn’t care that much, but after Dad died, it got worse. I realize I’m not exactly runway model material now, but I was a heavy kid who liked to read. She wanted me to be a pretty girl she could dress up. She tried to get plastic surgery for me, but the doctor wouldn’t do it on a kid that young. She—started doing physical things to me then, things she told the doctor were “accidents.” When I was eighteen, I was legally able to access the trust and get out for school.”

“People see me now, and they think I had the debutante past. At some point, I grew into myself and learned how to present myself, no thanks to my mother. I didn’t have any contact with her while I was in university, but when I was in my early twenties, she came to me. She apologized for 'being so hard on you to help you excel,' and said I should use the house since I was technically half owner of it, per my father’s will.”

“I’m not exactly proud of it, but I accepted her lame apology. I’d just gotten out of a relationship, and, God help me, I wanted family. I let her back into my life. And then I saw what she was doing. I’m not proud of the fact that I’ve stuck with her all this time, but I’ve never let her treat me the way she did before. That much—I kept for myself. But Neal, somebody’s got to finally stop her. 

No way around it, Neal wanted to hug her. But he didn’t invade her space in any way. “Reason understood,” he said, trying to convey compassion with his eyes. “As long as you stay committed to this, it will work. She’ll be stopped.”

“Good,” answered Jade. “I’ve never told anyone all of that before, not even my therapist.”

Neal caught and held eye contact. “It never goes out of this room.”

After a moment, he collected the half-eaten bowls that neither of them seemed inclined to finish and took them to the sink. “One more thing. I know you don’t need my approval, but you’re a beautiful woman. Heck of a lot better than a pretty girl.”

Jade stood next to the counter and looked over at him while he ran water into the used dishes. “I really want to give you a hug.”

“I’ll let you,” he said, “but only if you promise to let me read your books. I love antiquities.”

Jade laughed. “No, really, I mean that!” Neal protested while his arms were filled up with her. He liked the feeling, more than he had liked anything for a long time.


	9. The Tangled Web

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter gets some hope, and Neal takes a huge step.

As soon as Peter got to the office the morning after Lewis’s call, he was called into a meeting with the director and Fortnum. “Burke, sit down.” He felt like he’d rather stand because of his nervous energy, but he did as asked.

“Italian police have a guy. He says he was hired by somebody—doesn’t know who; he does dirty jobs for a local criminal outfit, and they didn’t plan it. Says they picked up a kid in Milan and took him to Paris to do a handoff. Didn’t work. Kid got away.”

“This guy was brought in on a drug charge, but the cops there said he was scared to death, like he expected charges for something else, so they played along and acted like they knew more than they did. He cracked and gave them this, said the crew were all terrified of being caught once the kid got away.”

“But is it my kid?” Peter leaned toward the desk, breathing hard.

“He didn’t see the kid’s face because they had a mask on him,” said Lewis, “but we sent over a full body shot, and he said it could be—definitely a boy, height seemed right. Not sure about the voice; he said he didn’t hear the kid say much, and our recording of Neal didn’t spark anything.”

Fortnum turned to Peter. “We’ve let Paris police know to look for a boy of Neal’s description.”

“It’s a start,” Peter said, closing his eyes tightly. 

He went to the empty corner office and called El. They both cried on the phone. 

—

When Neal got home from seeing Jade and then his kids, he found his namesake overexcited from pizza and soda (Moz was a soft touch when it came to sugar). Neal beckoned the little boy over and set him on his lap. 

“Talk to me. How did you get away from those guys?”

He had rightly judged that the little boy was comfortable enough to answer without distress. “They put me into a car after the boat, but then they switched cars. I don’t know why. The big one put me in the trunk, but he didn’t close it right away, so I got out and ran away. It was dark, and they didn’t realize I was gone. I just ran until I had to stop. I don’t know where I was. One of the girls found me in the night and said I had to come see Gabriel.”

“That was a very brave thing to do, Neal.”

The little boy nodded seriously. “My dad said if anybody ever took me, to listen, watch, and take every chance. We used to practice it sometimes.”

“He’s going to be so proud of you,” Neal said, lifting the now somewhat calmer child and carrying him to bed.

—

Once the little boy was asleep, Neal rejoined Mozzie and let himself kick into high gear. “The pieces are coming together, my friend,” said Mozzie.

“Yes,” Neal agreed, “and we have to contact Peter. They’ve got to be going through torture.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” Mozzie said. “While you’ve been gone, I haven’t been idle. I have a pipeline. As soon as you give the word, an FBI admin assistant will give Peter a coffee cup with a message tucked into the sleeve. That message will tell him to come outside and call a number. That number, of course, is not your number, but it will nonetheless route to your phone.”

Neal gaped. “Wow, Moz, impressive, even for you.”

“With everyone running scared, including, as you say, the woman at the top of whatever this is, I figured we were reaching the point of contacting the Burkes without fear for their immediate safety. Not that anything about this won’t be charmingly discreet.”

“I didn’t know you had someone at the FBI.” 

“Entry level,” Mozzie answered, “but I knew she would come in handy some day.”

“Do it,” Neal said, ready to enter the next phase of the operation. “We need Peter, and Neal needs his parents.”

Mozzie punched something into his computer. “If this works, your untraceable phone will next receive a call from one Agent Peter Burke.”

—

Peter tried to calm himself by working on his other case, the Danziger art scheme. He’d actually managed to make some headway into compiling a list of who he might need to look into when one of the admin assistants he didn’t know very well brought him a coffee.

People had really been extraordinarily nice since Neal’s disappearance, and Peter looked up to thank the girl, only to notice her finger on a tiny slip of paper stuck between the cup sleeve and the cup, like she was pointing to it. He reached for it, and the girl disappeared back to her desk.

“Go outside, and call this number.” The message was succinct, and Peter did not recognize the phone number. Under other circumstances, he might not have obeyed so readily, but at the moment he was ready to jump at anything. He grabbed a secure departmental cell phone and went outside.

“Hey, Peter. It’s Neal.” For the second time that day, Special Agent Peter Burke blinked back tears.


	10. Immunity for Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter reconnects with his son, and Neal helps the Burkes plan their next step.

“Neal, I—“

“Before you say anything,” Neal stopped him, “listen. Your son is fine, and I didn’t kidnap him.”

“—, Neal,” Peter swore. “At least do me the credit of knowing I wouldn’t accuse you of that. We named him after you for a reason.”

“I love you, too, Peter,” Neal said, “but listen. Your son is here, in Paris. The reason I’m talking to you, instead of giving this information to the bureau, is that if you give this to the FBI now, it will all get pinned on the guys who were hired to do it. Even if they try to prove that someone else is the mastermind, it almost definitely won’t stick. I’m running an operation to get the person who paid for it.”

“Neal,” Peter cut in, “put my son on the call. Now.”

Neal turned on speakerphone. “He’s right here, Peter.”His namesake was beside him on the sofa, squirming in excitement.

“Dad!”

“Hey, Buddy.” Neal could hear tears in Peter’s voice. “Are—are you okay?”

“Yeah, Uncle Neal is really nice, and Mozzie.”

“I’m—gonna see you soon, okay, me and mom.”

“Dad, I want to go home.” The little boy held onto Neal’s side while he talked, and Neal put a comforting arm around him.

“Soon, buddy,” said Peter. “Really, really soon.”

“Peter, I thought you might want to do a video call with Elizabeth. You can use the same number,” Neal put in. 

“All right,” Peter answered. “Son, Dad and Mom love you so much. Be good for Uncle Neal, and we’ll be together really soon.”

“Okay, Dad,” the little boy answered. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, buddy, so much.”

Neal surreptitiously wiped tears from his own eyes as Peter said, “Okay, Caffrey, take me off speaker and finish what you were saying.”

Neal did as told. “I have the person at the top of this whole thing. I just need a little more time to finish getting proof. Do you remember investigating a guy named Charles Danziger?”

“I can do you one better,” Peter answered. “I just got his wife’s file. Some kind of art theft ring.”

There it was, the missing motive, or, at least, an opening for one. Neal practically shouted. “It’s her, Peter. I have an informant who can get recorded proof that she hired the goons who took Neal, but it’s not finished. If you give this to the bureau right now, she’ll almost certainly get away because there’s not enough evidence linking her to it. She’s too intelligent to leave a trail. We need her own admission to seal the deal.”

“I trust your assessment,” Peter answered, which was music to Neal’s ears. “The bureau has testimony of one of the kidnappers, but he doesn’t know enough. We weren’t even sure it was Neal he was talking about. But Paris—that’s the connection.”

“We’ll tell you all about it soon,” Neal said, “but what you need to know is that your son escaped.” He put the phone back on speaker. “Neal, tell your dad how you got away, like you told me and Moz.”

The little boy shook his head. “Dad?”

“Yeah, buddy? I’m really, really proud. I bet you did just like we practiced.”

“But Dad, I—was bad when we were at the aquarium. I’m really sorry.” Oh no. Neal could hear his one-time partner, seasoned and sharp-edged Special Agent Peter Burke, sobbing on the other end of the phone.

“It’s—it’s okay, buddy,” Peter finally managed. “I’m just glad you’re okay. I missed you so much.”

Neal took the phone back again. “Hey, Peter, probably some conversations would be better in person. If you want to call with El, I’ll keep Neal up.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Peter said, sounding like he was catching his breath and calming himself down. “I’ll—get Lewis to send me to Paris. We can travel there to meet you and get Neal without letting the bureau know that we already know where he is. It will buy you a few days, at least. After that, we have to call it in. I don’t want to become an accessory to my own son’s kidnapping."

“Exactly what I would have suggested,” Neal agreed, experiencing the long-missed satisfaction of being on the same page as his quick-thinking friend.”

“All right,” said Peter, “I’m going home, and I’ll video call you with El in an hour. And Caffrey?”

“Yeah?”

“Missed you, too, buddy, more than I can say. I’d kill you for faking your death, but that would defeat the purpose of seeing you safe and sound.” Neal suddenly felt like he had a lot more to apologize for than his namesake had. After all, Mozzie had told him how much they’d grieved for him. 

“Peter, I—”

“You’re about to apologize. Don’t. You kept my kid safe, Neal. That’s immunity for life.”

—

Neal the younger was so excited after talking to his father that Neal and Mozzie wouldn’t have gotten him to bed even if they’d tried. He clambered onto Neal’s lap, which seemed to be his favorite place to sit in the apartment, to wait for his mother’s call.

“Uncle Neal, you were right. He wasn’t mad or anything.”

“Told you,” Neal answered, running a hand through the boy’s fine brown hair. “I know your dad really well.”

“Are my parents going to take me home?”

“Of course, as soon as they can.”

“Are you coming home, too?”

Neal didn’t answer for a few seconds. “I don’t know, buddy.” He was honest with the little boy, the way he wished adults would have been honest with him.

His namesake turned around on his knee and gave him the most appealing Elizabeth Burke-like wide-eyed look he had ever seen. “Please, Uncle Neal.”

“Whew,” said Mozzie, who had just come out from the second bedroom, “that’s—enhanced interrogation, right there.”

Neal just hugged his honorary nephew and said nothing at all.  
—

Within the hour, Neal’s phone alerted to a video call, and he handed it to the little boy, who answered it. Instantly, the screen was filled with the faces of two people Neal loved more than he’d used to think it was possible to love anybody . He could see the tears in El’s eyes, and he felt his own filling again, but he let them.

“Hi, baby,” El said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “And hi, Uncle Neal.” The warmth was overwhelming, the ocean of comfort that washed over him. He had missed this, even more than he’d realized. His nephew’s request was starting to seem less and less like something he would never consider and more like something he would do anything to fulfill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case the time zones get confusing, Neal is six hours later than the Burkes at any given time.


	11. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the calm before the storm, Peter and El discuss the plan, and Neal tells his nephew a bedtime story.

After half an hour of smiles and tears, Peter could see through the screen that his son was growing drowsy. “It’s late your time,” he said to his former partner. “Son, time for bed. The quicker you sleep, the sooner you’ll see Mom and me, okay?”

“Yes, Dad,” said the little boy obediently. That was definitely one way the two Neals didn’t resemble each other.

El blew a kiss into the phone. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart, I promise.” Then she pointed at the screen. “You, too, Neal Caffrey. You have explaining to do.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Neal meekly, but with a telltale smile at the corner of his mouth. 

“Neal, I’ll call you with the flight details once I have it worked out.” Peter said, willing himself to believe he could make it work.

“Understood,” Neal answered. 

“Bye,” waved the little boy, and Peter once again swallowed back tears, knowing the separation wouldn’t be much longer and that his son was safe.

Once Peter had hung up the phone, El dove into his arms. “Peter, he’s fine. I can’t believe he’s actually fine. For days, they’ve been trying to prepare us for the worst. And he’s even with Neal. What happens now?”

Peter held her close. “We go get him.”

“Just like that?” El asked.

“No,” Peter answered, realizing he needed to bring her into the plan. “Neal is running an operation to get the person behind taking our son. If we take what we know to the bureau now, they’ll get the muscle but not the brains. Neal needs more time.”

“So what are you going to do?” El asked, pulling her head off his chest long enough to wonder.

“I’m going to go get my boss to send us to Paris to help with the search there. I’ll just—leave out some of the relevant into, and what Lewis doesn’t know—yet—won’t kill him.”

“What about Neal, honey?” El asked. “Adult Neal, I mean. What happens to him when this all shakes down? He’s part of the case now, but he’s supposed to be dead.”

“You know I’ve always tried to protect him,” Peter answered, “and I’ll try to keep him out of it if I can.”

“I know you will,” El answered, between kissing him. “I just keep thinking, it’s a huge sacrifice for him to come out of hiding for this.”

“It is,” Peter agreed. “It’s incredibly decent of him.”

“We did a good job picking our son’s name,” El added softly.

—

“You heard your dad,” said Neal gently, hoisting his namesake into his arms, “it’s time for bed.”

“Will you tell me a story?” the little boy asked. “My mom tells me fairy tales.”

“Sure,” said Neal, thinking very quickly. He sat down on the bed, leaning on the headboard with the child curled up against him. “How about the one with the knight, the peasant, and the beautiful princess?”

“Okay,” said the little boy.

“Once upon a time, there was a very famous knight. He slew many dragons, and he was very brave. Even the king was impressed by him. Well, the king had a problem, because there was a peasant boy who was stealing his royal sheep and even robbing the palace of its gold. So, he sent the very famous knight to catch the wicked peasant. What do you think happened?” 

The little boy looked up at him with wide eyes. “Did the knight kill the peasant with his sword?”

Neal shook his head. “The peasant escaped many times because he was very clever, and even the knight couldn’t find him. But, finally, the knight figured out what the peasant wanted most in the world.”

“What?” asked the engrossed bundle on Neal’s lap.

“He loved a beautiful princess he couldn’t marry because he was a peasant, but the knight captured him by finding her and luring him there. And then the knight did something the wicked peasant did not expect at all.”

“Did he take the peasant to the king as a prisoner?”

Neal shook his head again. “No, the peasant boy desperately begged the knight to teach him to be a knight, and to his surprise, the famous knight said he would. The knight taught him many things, and they even became best friends.”

Little Neal shook his head. “But what about all the bad things the peasant did?”

“The knight taught him how to help the people of the kingdom instead of doing those things any more.”

“Oh,” the child answered. “Did he marry the princess after he became a knight?”

“The beautiful princess went away to a faraway land, and the peasant never saw her again. But, the famous knight married the king’s daughter and lived happily ever after.”

The little boy smiled. “I don’t think the peasant was very bad. He just wanted a best friend.”

Neal got up, placing his nephew carefully on the bed and tucking the quilt around him. “I think you’re pretty smart.”

“Thanks for the story,” the little boy said sleepily. “It was a good one.”

“You have no idea,” Neal answered very softly, smiling to himself as he left the room.

Mozzie met him in the living room. “Your life isn’t half bad as a Medieval AU, but you didn’t end it right.”

“What do you mean?’ Neal asked, amused.

“You didn’t tell the part where the peasant-turned-knight went on a quest and fell in love with a dragon’s daughter.” The look Mozzie gave him was very pointed.

“That’s for the sequel,” Neal replied with a smirk.


	12. Closing the Net

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter calls in a favor, and Neal gets the evidence he needs.

“Sir, I’d like permission to go to Paris with my wife to help with our son’s case.” Peter’s request for an end-of-day meeting with Director Lewis had been granted immediately, and he was fully willing to take advantage of the sympathy his situation elicited. He stood across the desk from his superior and took the direct approach, which was totally normal; in fact, he was known for it.

“That’s a bit complicated,” Lewis said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll have to clear it with the State Department because of travel restrictions.”

“The leads point there,” Peter said, which was truer than his boss had any way of knowing. “I assume you’d feel the same way if it was your child.”

Lewis nodded. “You I can send in as an official FBI liaison. I don’t know if I can get authorization for your wife.”

Peter, who had anticipated this, nodded. “Sir, I haven’t asked for a personal favor at any point since you were named director. I’d like to ask for one now. Whether it’s good news or bad news, she deserves to be there.” He chose his words carefully, avoiding saying anything outright deceptive.

Lewis gave him a long look, his chin resting on his hand. “I suppose I can give her an official role, but she’ll have to generate a report and actually do the job."

“She’ll be perfectly fine with that,” Peter answered.

Lewis put his hand out, and Peter shook it. “Burke, I hope for the best for both of you and your son. Keep that hope alive.”

“Thank you, sir,” Peter answered, immensely relieved. He might not be able to call in another favor for the next ten years, but this one was worth it. Best of all, he’d managed to do it without actually lying. The logistics beyond that they could work out as they went.

Peter left the office and straightened his tie, proud of himself. He might not go undercover much any more, but he still had the touch when needed. 

—

Neal awoke in the middle of the night to his shoulder being aggressively shaken by Mozzie, who pushed him to sit up and sat next to him on the living room sofa with a laptop, handing him an earbud. “Jade Danziger’s phone just alerted.” Neal rubbed his eyes and put in the earphone, trying to wake up quickly enough to be useful.

“Mom?”

“Sweetie, I’m sorry to call so late your time. I wanted to tell you, I’m going fully off the grid for a while.”

“What? You can’t do that, mom. I’ll—miss you so much.” Neal was impressed by the convincing voice acting performance she was putting on. “Whatever is going on, we can fix it. We have our family lawyer.”

“It’s not like that,” Lucy answered. “This is international now, and they’re probably going to find a body.”

“Whose body?” Jade asked. “I don’t understand.”

“They still haven’t found the little boy, and it's been way too long for good news,” her mother answered, human enough to sound actually distressed. 

“Who is he?” Jade asked, and Neal clenched his fist on his knee in nervous anticipation, hoping she’d played her cards well enough. 

“He’s the son of an FBI agent, the one who investigated Dad years ago. You remember, right? I got a tip that he was going to start investigating us, so I—hired somebody to take care of the problem. You have to believe me, Jade. I thought he was going to scare Burke off the case, dig up some personal dirt on him and use it as blackmail or something. But instead, he arranged the kidnapping of Burke’s kid. He said they planned to hold him for ransom and only give him back if Burke agreed to back off, but the kid escaped in Paris.”

“That’s the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard,” Jade said, and though this might not have been the most diplomatic response at the time, Neal completely agreed with her. 

“I know,” Lucy answered. “I wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

“But you did. I mean, you caused it,” Jade pressed, and Neal willed her to get what she was after.

“Yes,” Lucy admitted, “I paid for it, and I’m responsible for it. I only wanted to protect what we have going with the art—your inheritance. I never thought it would go out of control like this.”

Mozzie looked over at Neal and mouthed, “That’s it.” Neal nodded. They had what they needed most, the connection to Neal Burke and the admission of guilt.

“Where are you, mom? I’m worried.” Jade wasn’t finished, and Neal admired her projection of calm, knowing she must be as excited as he was.

“I’m at the house in Scotland, but don’t try to come here. Stay there, and if the police trace this back to us, just say you don’t know anything. They won’t be able to pin it on you.”

“All right,” said Jade. “I love you, no matter what.” Neal wondered, as he heard this, if it was true. He wasn’t sure if Jade herself even knew. 

As soon as the call was terminated, Neal’s phone rang. “Hey, how did I do?” Jade sounded almost breathless.

“For somebody who recently started lying, you’re pretty good at it, Miss Danziger,” he answered, trying to lighten the mood and help her calm down. 

“I know where my mom is, Neal. I can give you the address, provided she’s not lying to me.”

“We’ll have to give over the evidence we have first; otherwise, they have no reason to arrest her. You can proffer what you know to the FBI—probably tomorrow, in fact. Peter Burke is coming to Paris.”

“Agent Burke is coming here. Why?”

Neal took a deep breath. “Because his son is here, and he’s coming to get him.”

“What do you know?” she asked suspiciously. “Don’t hold out on me, Neal. I’ve done my best.”

“I have the kid,” Neal answered. “He’s here, and he’s fine. You should know that whatever your mom eventually goes down for, it at least won’t be accessory to murder.”

“Whew,” Jade said. “How did you work that out?”

“As much as I would love to tell you it was a victory of wit and skill, he practically fell into my lap.”

“Sounds like destiny,” Jade answered.

“I don’t believe in destiny,” Neal retorted.

“Then love,” she replied. “I could tell the minute you started talking about Burke that you love him like family, and there’s nothing more powerful in the universe than that.”

Neal wanted to argue, but he didn’t have the heart. “Try to get some sleep. Things are going to be very interesting from here on out.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Jade answered facetiously. “Good night, Neal.”

“Good night, Jade.”

Neal tried to calm himself back down, lying on the sofa and contemplating the blue-eyed, sharp-minded woman who had suffered loss and abuse but still somehow believed in the power of love to change the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to write it as tougher for Peter to get the bureau to agree to the trip, but it just didn’t ultimately make sense and felt like it would be a pointless obstacle. It’s a good plan, the FBI would want an agent on the ground quickly at the last place where they got a lead, and the only major complication is El. That’s where Peter’s service record and seniority come in. Neal & Peter are not dumb—unlike the idiot Lucy hired, they know how to craft a workable plan.


	13. Last Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter discovers that El has complicated feelings about seeing Neal, and Neal gives Jade one last chance.

Peter helped Elizabeth pack in the middle of the night. Lewis had come through, and they were set to fly out on the red eye, with El officially designated as Peter’s investigative assistant. 

“Not exactly the way I imagined taking you to the City of Light,” Peter said, rolling his slacks to make them as small as possible for the suitcase.

El looked over from packing her cosmetics and smiled. “Getting our son back will be the best gift ever. And seeing Neal—the original—is the icing on the cake.”

Peter shook his head. “I hope he’s happy to see us.”

“Oh, hon,” she answered, “I know he likes his anonymity, but he loves you like a brother. Of course he’s missed you like you missed him.”

Peter walked over and wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding her close for comfort. “But I didn’t go after him, El. He ran, and I didn’t chase him.”

“He understands,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Peter, he has our baby. He knows why. I’m sure he gets it.”

“I hope so,” said Peter, less sure.

El turned around and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him. “I don’t doubt for one second that Neal gets it, but I love that you care so much.” Peter kissed her back, and there was no talking for a few minutes.

Finally, El added, “He faked his death. He has more to be sorry for than you do.”

Peter noted genuine affront in her voice. “I’m not upset about that any more, but you seem to be.”

El resumed packing, but she was sharp in her movements, and she breathed like she was in a huff. “I didn’t even realize I felt this way until you told me we were really going. I was just happy about getting our son, and then I realized I’d never actually processed my feelings about finding out the pain I felt when Neal died was fake.”

“Well,” said Peter, “I hope you give him a piece of your mind. He certainly deserves it.” He knew very well that his wife wouldn’t be able to stay angry for long once she laid eyes on Neal, whom she had always adored.

“I also want to hug him for about a week,” El said. “Very consistent, right? I have no clue which thing is going to come out first when I see him.”

Peter nodded. “It’s like that with family, sometimes.”

—

Neal left his namesake breakfasting with Mozzie. He did not tell the little boy that his parents were set to arrive in the early evening, in case it didn’t work out at the last minute. He watched for Peter’s text letting him know that they’d boarded their nonstop flight. 

Now that Jade had gotten such damning evidence from her mother, he no longer needed time. He was eager for things to get moving so that Lucy and her associates would have as little time as possible to find out how close they were to being caught and complicate things further.

He had one more task before everything spun into out-of-control motion. He had to give the girl a chance.

“Good morning,” he said, as Jade opened the door to his second apartment. She hugged him briefly and tightly as a greeting.

“Come in. I made an omelette.”

Neal couldn’t think of a good reason to say no to having breakfast. He had time to kill, and he enjoyed her company. 

“So what now?” Jade asked, once they had coffee, toast, and eggs in front of them at the tiny table.

“Peter Burke flies in tonight. If you choose to go through with this, you’ll come with me now, and we’ll do the proffer tonight. I’ll give Peter the recordings, and you’ll validate them.”

As he’d expected, she registered his choice of words. “‘If?’ I already told you I was in, from the first night I met you”

“I just want you to think about it again,” he said. “Your mother heavily implied on those calls that you knew something about her business—not the kidnapping, but the art. If we give those to the FBI, we don’t control what they do with them. You could be charged.”

Jade nodded. “I already thought about that. I never helped her, but I should have done more, sooner, and this whole thing could have been prevented.”

Neal put out his hand and brushed her hair off her downturned face. “Don’t blame yourself for other people’s bad choices.”

She caught his hand and held it. “Besides, you have the recordings anyway. Even without me, you could turn us in.”

Neal nodded. “It would be tougher to validate, but I could probably do it. I wouldn’t, though. This is your chance to back out. You say the word, and I destroy those recordings and forget the things you’ve told me. I give Peter his son, and I help him prove what happened some other way.”

Jade shook her head. “That’s a big if. You know very well it would give too much time for escapes and too many loopholes.”

“It’s not what I want,” agreed Neal, “but the offer stands, and I wouldn’t violate it.”

“Why?” Jade asked, not letting go of his hand.

“Don’t you know?” Neal responded. 

“You hopeless romantic,” Jade said, and she leaned across the table and kissed him. 

“I’m still in,” she said, finally pulling back. Neal took her face in his hands and answered without speaking.

—

“We’re taking off.” Peter texted Neal, an overwhelming sense of nostalgia filling him at the thought of working one more case with his long-lost best friend.


	14. Author’s Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little note from the author...

This story reached 50 kudos today, and I just wanted to drop in and say thank you to everyone who is reading, commenting, and taking time to click the Kudos button. It really does mean a huge amount, especially in the middle of a longer story.

Never fear, this story will not be abandoned. We’ll fully finish and flesh out character reunions and reconciliations, the case, and the future. I’m enjoying the ride & hope you are, too.

I genuinely had no idea when I started this story (while rewatching the series) that White Collar still had such a vibrant base of readers and writers. I’m sure we’d all love to see a revival of the series in some form, but until then, let’s keep creating.

Cheers,  
Pickwick


	15. Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal introduces Jade to Neal Burke and tries to do some parenting. Peter and El arrive in the City of Light.

Neal had warned Mozzie that he was bringing Jade to their real apartment, so he only got half a glare when they arrived. He’d promised to move again when it was all over, which was his normal habit anyway. No more than six months in one location.

Mozzie and the little boy had finished breakfast, and Neal was delighted to see that Moz had succumbed to his fondness for the child enough to be reading him Alice in Wonderland from his tablet.

“Uncle Neal!” Neal was still not used to having someone who was excited to see him even when he’d only been gone a couple of hours, but he returned his nephew’s hug with interest and picked him up.

“Wow, he seriously looks like Agent Burke,” said Jade. 

The little boy looked over at her from Neal’s arms. “You know my dad?”

“Neal, this is Jade. Jade, Neal Burke.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Neal. I knew your dad a long time ago because he’s very good at his job.”

“Did you do something bad?” The little boy’s question made sense in context, so Neal didn’t reprimand him, awkwardness notwithstanding.

Jade grinned. “He was checking on somebody close to me. I wasn’t much older than you when I met him.” The little boy kept round eyes on her, as if he was trying to imagine her as a child and failing. 

Neal set his namesake down. “Jade is here because your parents are coming to pick you up today.”

This bombshell took a few seconds to register, and then, for only the second time since the whole ordeal had started, Neal Burke was crying.

“Oh no,” Neal heard Mozzie intone from the couch, and he looked over to Jade and mouthed He’s been through a lot.

Neal hadn’t expected this, or he would never have put the little boy down. He knelt down in front of his namesake and pulled out his pocket square to wipe the tears. “It’s all going to be over soon, and you can go home. You’ve been really brave, Neal. It’s okay not to be sometimes.” Never mind the pocket square. It was like a raft against an ocean. Instead, Neal just pulled his nephew against him and held him tightly, with no thought for his designer jacket now getting drenched.

Neal knew nothing about parenting, so he continued to operate by thinking about the little boy Neal Caffrey and trying to be the person that scared kid with his checked-out mom and damaged Aunt Ellen had desperately wanted. He felt the irony of the fact that he was now comforting the son of the two people who had actually managed to put that kid back together and help him learn to be a man.

—

Peter felt his anticipation rising for the entire flight, and El’s fidgeting betrayed that she felt the same way. For perhaps the first time in his career, solving a case meant next to nothing compared to the real objectives. He just wanted his son safe and sound. 

Beyond that, Neal. Peter wondered if Caffrey realized that to him it felt like getting a son and a brother back all at the same time. Probably not. Neal had never rested that easy in his care. Some of that had been Peter’s fault, some not. He was glad for one more chance, and he hoped those wide eyes wouldn’t shut him out.

“Hon, we’re here.” El smiled at him, her excitement tangible. He’d fallen asleep, and he woke up to see the lights of the runway at evening. Now they would have to extricate themselves from their unavoidable Paris police liaison as quickly as possible to run to their son. Immediately wasn’t soon enough.


	16. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Burkes reunite with their son, and Neal gets the hug he’s waited seven years for.

As expected, the Burkes were met by a Parisian police escort. They were set to meet with the Paris FBI attaché office and Interpol in the morning. Peter was relieved to arrive in the evening, which meant those meetings could reasonably be pushed to the next day without him lying or seeming crazy. 

The officers were polite and somber, clearly aware that they were dealing with the parents of the missing child. Peter breathed deeply, keeping his excitement in check as they were driven to their hotel. Finally, blessed release, they were left in the ornate lobby with reassurances of cooperation and the promise of a car to pick them up in the early morning.

As soon as they were alone, the Burkes dashed for the nearest elevator, dragging suitcases over the stone tiled floor and waving away the offer of assistance. Once the elevator door closed, Peter smiled over at El, noting how beautiful she looked with her hair tousled and her cheeks rosy from the exertion. “We made it, Hon,” he said, grinning. 

El reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Nobody I’d rather be with than you.”

They dropped their bags off in the surprisingly decent-looking suite (considering FBI money), and Peter called for a taxi. 

“Nothing’s going to go wrong now, right?” El asked, as they changed clothes and prepared for a long evening reunion. 

“Look out at the lights,” Peter said, pointing out the window. “Across those lights, our son is waiting with Neal right now.”

—

Waiting was the hard part. Neal felt as antsy as his namesake was acting. He’d gone out to take care of the kids, and now he was on the sofa, while Neal the younger fidgeted between the PlayStation, Neal’s lap, and staring out the window.

Mozzie had quietly slipped away earlier in the day. He would, he said, see the Burkes any time, but he did not want to be attached to this particular case. Neal didn’t ask where he was going; his friend was more than able to take care of himself.

Jade had watched the little boy during Neal’s errand—the kids were wary of strangers, and he’d decided not to try to introduce her, yet, anyway. Now she was next to him on the sofa, and Neal could feel that she was as tense as he was. The difference was, his anticipation, while not completely without ambivalence, was mostly excitement. Hers felt like dread.

“Hey,” said Neal softly, while the little boy was temporarily distracted fighting in-game aliens. “It’s okay. You can trust Peter. He’s not going to throw you under the bus.”

“It’s all going to change,” Jade answered. “No matter what he does. I’m scared, Neal. I—liked being a nerd academic who didn’t matter.”

Neal put his arm around her and pulled her close. “The girl who pointed a gun at me not very long ago wasn’t anything like a wallflower, and she definitely mattered. This is your chance to make your dad proud and stop your mom. You can do this.”

Jade nodded against his shoulder. “You’re right, but I’m not a very good femme fatale, am I? You must have dated amazing women, exciting women. I have no idea why you’re remotely interested in me.”

Neal kissed her forehead. “Don’t sell yourself short. Art is about liking a painting the way it is, not for what it isn’t.”

Just then, a light tap on the door let Neal know that it was time. No lights or taxi sounds had signaled the approach because he’d told Peter to be let off several streets over and do the rest on foot. 

“Neal,” he said. “Come here.” The little boy dropped his game controller and bounded over, taking his uncle’s hand. Jade hung slightly behind as Neal opened the door. 

“Peter.”

“Neal.”

The two men locked eyes, and then pandemonium ensued. Neal closed the door to prying eyes on the street, as Peter picked up his son, and both parents held onto him for dear life. Crying, laughing, hugging. It was everything Neal had hoped it would be. He had never seen the Burkes with their son before; he felt tears in his own eyes. This. This was the love little Neal Caffrey had ached for, the protective embrace of a father and the warm comfort of a present mother. 

“I missed you. I love you.” The words, over and over, said by all three of them, and finally, “You’re safe,” said by both parents. Neal wiped his eyes.

“Hey,” After a long time Peter looked over at Neal and relinquished his son fully into El’s grasp.

“Hey,” Neal answered, standing still as Peter approached.

This time was different. This time wasn’t like the island. This time, Neal reached for Peter at the same time that Peter reached for him, and he melted into Peter’s embrace without shame. 

“Hey, buddy,” said Peter, not letting go. “You owe me a lot more than a handshake.”

“No arguments here,” Neal answered, in no hurry whatsoever to get away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there’s a lot of anticipation for the reunions, and they will probably extend over a couple of chapters. I hope you enjoy these emotional moments. I’ve tried to stay true to our characters, while also thinking about how they would feel after seven years. If I can’t get a filmed reunion of these characters (please), at least I can write it.


	17. Reacquainted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal faces Elizabeth, and Peter assesses the situation.

After a long hug, Peter finally let go with a characteristic pat of Neal’s shoulders. He took his son from El, who turned to Neal.

Neal could see the conflict on her face, but after a moment, she came forward and hugged him fiercely around the waist. “You’re angry,” he said, returning her hug. “I don’t blame you.”

“I’m angry, and I missed you, and I’m glad you’re safe,” she answered. 

“How can I make it up to you?” Neal asked, still holding her.

“You know how,” she answered. “Come home.”

“I promise I’ll—think about it,” he said softly, and El pulled back but took his face in her hands. “Losing you felt horrible. Don’t make me do it again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Neal answered, smiling down at her fondly. “I missed you, too, Elizabeth.”

—

“Neal, who’s—wait, you’re Tweety Bird.” Peter, who was holding his son and appreciating his wife’s reunion with Neal, finally focused on the woman hanging back in the room. 

The woman stepped forward. “Hi, Agent Burke.” He hadn’t seen her in many years, but he recognized the spark in her eyes and the shy half smile. 

“Tweety Bird?” Neal finally let go of Elizabeth and gave Peter a weird look.

Peter smiled. “We’ve had long conversations about classic cartoons. I called her Tweety because that was her favorite.”

“Still is,” said Jade, smiling back. 

Realization dawned on Peter immediately. “SHE’s the informant?” 

“I am,” Jade answered instead of Neal. “I’m not the scared kid you knew before. I can do this.”

Peter gave her a long look. “I remember how it was,” he said. “I understand the motive; at least, I think I do.” The girl nodded but didn’t answer.

Peter sat down on the sofa with his son on his knee and proceeded to ask for the story of everything that had happened. El sat next to him so she could half hold the little boy, and Neal and Jade took the other two chairs. Everything else on his mind notwithstanding, Peter still had his powers of observation, and he saw that Neal liked the girl. Her feelings were less apparent to him, and he hoped this wasn’t another doomed romance of the sort Neal seemed perpetually and fatally attracted to.

Little Neal spun a story as confusing as it was horrifying, of blindfolds, car trunks, boats, and planes. Peter was gratified that his son had a strong memory. He brought out his phone and flipped through a set of photos. He showed the boy an album with eight different men in it. “Neal, do you recognize any of these people?”

Instantly, the child pointed to the man Italian police had questioned, exactly as Peter had hoped. “Very good,” he said, beaming with pride at his son’s escape and subsequently lucid narrative. He cuddled the little boy against him, finally feeling his body truly relax for the first time since the horrible day when his son had disappeared.

El looked over at Neal the elder. “Why were you out there that night when you found him?”

Neal smiled. “The group he was with are my kids, Elizabeth. I hired a couple of the older ones to run some errands for me a long time ago, and now—we’re all friends. They’re in complicated situations. I can’t fix everything, but I help.”

“Are you Fagin or Sherlock Holmes in this scenario?” Peter asked.

Neal rolled his eyes. “I probably deserved that. Strictly above-board. Lately it’s just been about getting them off the streets during quarantines and curfews.”

Peter looked at El and could see that she was touched. “I told you he was helping somebody who needed it,” she said. 

He smiled. “Believe it or not, Neal, my wife was the one defending you not that long ago.”

“Thank you, Elizabeth,” said Neal. “I think—what I’ve done here might actually make you proud.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said El, who appeared to have nearly forgotten that she’d wanted to metaphorically rip Neal’s head off at one point.

“Uncle Neal buys the best cereals,” said the little Burke suddenly. “And Mozzie cooks good pizzas.”

“Where is Mozzie?” Peter asked. He had already noticed evidence in the apartment that the little man had recently been there. 

“His secret,” Neal shrugged, and Peter laughed wryly. Just like old times.


	18. Talking it Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter takes Jade’s statement, and Neal talks things out with Elizabeth.

Even with all the excitement, Peter could tell his son was getting sleepy after a while. He kissed the little boy’s forehead and handed him into El’s waiting arms. “I’ll be here when you wake up, Champ. Hon, put him to bed, and then you can talk things out with Neal while I take Miss Danziger’s statements.”

Neal and El did as asked, taking the child into the bedroom, which left Peter alone with Jade, the woman who had been a child the last time he’d seen her. He faced her, sitting on the couch with her in a winged chair opposite, looking ill at ease.

“How does this work?” she asked, fidgeting nervously.

“First of all,” he answered, “I’m going to ask you again: Are you sure? You haven’t told me anything yet. What you tell me can’t be taken back, and depending on what kinds of things you tell me generally, there’s a possibility of implicating yourself in a lesser way. I don’t need to explain what this will mean for others.”

“I want to do it,” Jade replied. “If I deserve something for not coming forward before, so be it. You said you understood why—about my mother. I don’t have any guilt at all about bringing her down.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” said Peter softly, remembering the past, when he’d issued a complaint to the department of children and families that had never been followed up on over things he’d seen during his investigation.

Peter took out his small digital recorder: “This is Special Agent Peter Burke, taking the statement of Jade Danziger.” He was happy for that wide-eyed, sad little girl to finally get a chance to stand up to her abuser, even if it had taken years.

He smiled encouragingly. “Let’s get started.”

—

Neal and El didn’t have too hard a time getting the little boy to sleep, since he knew his parents weren’t going anywhere. They left him tucked in and then quietly went to the kitchen.

Neal started heating water for tea, while El sat down at the small kitchen table. “Half of me thought Peter might be the angry one,” Neal said, “but I finally settled on you. Peter gets over things more quickly. It’s how he’s managed not to kill me over the years.”

El looked over and drilled him with her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt to think we’d lost you?”

Neal considered. “It hurt me to leave, too, Elizabeth.”

“But you always had the choice,” she countered. “We just had the loss.” That was how it had always been, really. He had to admit it.

Neal handed her a mug with a brewing teabag. “I’m giving that up,” he said. “I’ll go on record and let the world know I’m alive to make sure you get justice. That’s all I know to do.”

“Oh, Neal,” El said, “I’m sorry. I know—your freedom here must have meant the world to you.” 

Neal sat down at the table and put his hand over hers gently. “It doesn’t mean more to me than you or Peter or Neal. Nothing ever has.”

That did it. El’s eyes filled with tears, and he could tell the last of her anger had ebbed away. “You know Peter will help as much as he can. Just, please, don’t leave again. Neal needs his uncle.”

“The minute I found out he was named after me, I knew I couldn’t stay away forever,” Neal answered honestly. “Thank you, Elizabeth.”


	19. Witnesses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter gets the FBI up to speed, and Neal comes to terms with his motivations.

By the time Peter finished taking the girl’s statement, it was after 11:00 p.m., which meant just after 5:00 at home. He called Lewis directly. 

“Sir, a witness has come forward in Paris, a result of some of the leads I was pursuing at home. She’s offered testimony about who planned the operation, and she says she knows where my son is—that he’s been located safely.”

None of this was a lie, though Peter felt like he was doing a delicate dance around reality. “Send me anything you get,” Lewis said, “and I’ll pass it to our Paris contacts.”

“Permission to get my son?” Peter asked.

“It’s unusual,” Lewis answered, “but I’ll give you permission. Be careful, and don’t escalate anything. You don’t have authority to arrest anyone, and I don’t want a situation on my hands. If you can extract him safely, do it. Otherwise, wait for backup. And Burke? I’m rooting for you and for him.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Peter, feeling like a bit of a heel for keeping Lewis in the dark. “I’ll report back.”

“It’s done,” Peter said to Jade as he ended the call. “I’ll send the recordings of your statements and the phone calls now. The FBI will relay the information, and it shouldn’t be long before our associates here have a warrant to arrest your mother.”

“And me?” Jade asked warily.

“You’re the most important witness,” Peter answered. “I’ll do everything I can to present you that way, but you should get in touch with your lawyer tomorrow.”

“I will,” she answered.

“Any regrets?” he asked curiously.

“None,” she said. 

—

They waited two hours for Peter to call in and say that his son had been found, a reasonable length of time for him to theoretically follow a lead and pick him up. The FBI knew the child had escaped, so Peter could tell the truth with certain omissions and make it work. 

Neal was out of it for now, but he had little doubt he wouldn’t be able to stay that way. At some point, Peter would have to explain how Jade had been found, and Neal would be a corroborating witness against her mother, since he’d listened in to the call.

That wasn’t the only reason. He left Peter and Elizabeth in the living room for a few minutes, so Peter could explain the evidence to El, and he led Jade into the kitchen.

Neal opened his arms, and he was relieved when Jade came into them. “You did it,” he said.

“I started it,” she corrected. “We’re nowhere near the end, and you know it.”

“You’ll make it,” Neal answered. “You’re incredibly brave.”

“What about you?” she asked, pulling away gently. “Agent Burke said it’s a problem for you to be a witness, that you’re supposed to be dead.”

Neal put his hands on her shoulders. “Even if there was a way for me to stay out of this completely, I really like you, and I want to be with you while you take the journey—if you want me to. I don’t want you to face it alone.”

Jade looked him in the eyes and nodded. “I don’t know where you and I are going to end up,” she said, “but I want to find out.”

“Me, too,” he said, “for better or worse.” Neal Caffrey had always been a romantic, and some things were worth risking everything for—even without knowing what lay ahead.


	20. Character Development

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal and Peter reconnect, and Peter gives Neal a complicated gift.

After a while, Elizabeth joined the two in the kitchen. “Neal, if you want to talk to my husband, now is a good time. He’s not planning to call in for another hour.” Neal nodded. This was coming; it always had been. He needed to face Peter and say more than a few sentences of greeting, so he went to the living room to take his medicine.

“Peter.”

“Neal.”

Neal sat down in one of the chairs, across from Peter, who still occupied the sofa. Somehow, Peter didn’t look tired at all, and it reminded Neal of how his friend had somehow always seemed to be perfectly at ease in himself and confident, no matter the case or scenario. It was something Neal deeply admired and wished he possessed, but the closest he had ever come was faking it capably.

Peter held out a Manila file folder.

“What’s this?” Neal asked.

“This is me saying I’m sorry I didn’t come after you,” Peter answered.

Neal opened the file and read the first page. Immediately, tears filled his eyes.

“It’s the one investigation you wouldn’t do,” Peter said. “The information is there, to use or not use, your choice.”

“I’m proud of you, Peter,” Neal said, wiping his eyes, too overwhelmed to comment on the file right away.

“What for?” Peter asked, clearly confused.

“You gave up the chase, Sherlock. You put your family in front of following me. That’s what they call character development.”

“I always thought I was more of a Doctor Watson,” Peter answered, leaning forward and putting a hand on Neal’s knee. His way of comforting had always been like that—direct, but a little offhand, never invasive.

“Besides,” Peter answered, “if Moriarty had ever decided to turn himself in for the sake of saving someone, that would have been the greatest character development of all.”

Neal gave Peter the exact same amused, quizzical look he had once given him in a hallway when Peter had stolen a surveillance tape to keep him out of prison. “Peter, are you comparing me to Professor Moriarty? That’s so flattering. I don’t know what to say.” He laughed, which of course had been Peter’s goal all along.

Neal stared down at the closed file on his lap. “I can’t deny that I’ve thought about her lately, especially with Jade—I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I really like her, Peter.” 

Peter smiled. “Knowing when somebody is the one isn’t trying to be grown up the way you always were after Kate—women in the loft, trying to prove you were a man. It’s somebody who can connect with the real you, even when you don’t have anybody else. She’s smart, and she’s interesting. You’ve done much worse.”

Neal nodded. “It’s early, but this is different.”

“I like this version of you,” Peter said, sitting back and giving Neal a long look.

“What?” Neal asked, “Boring? Almost respectable? Ready to settle down?”

“Nah,” Peter said, shaking his head. “No longer in denial of the fact that you’re an inherently good man.”

“Thank you, Peter,” Neal said, and he meant it.

Peter pointed to the file whose edges Neal was now fidgeting with his fingers. “I bet she’d like to know that, too.”

Neal closed his eyes for a long moment. “I’ll think about it.” He rested his hand over the top right corner of the folder, right above where he knew his mother’s picture was stapled underneath. 

—

“Sorry about that,” El said, as soon as Neal had left the kitchen. “You were probably having a nice moment, but I knew those two wouldn’t even start getting back to normal until they had a real conversation.”

“What is normal?” Jade asked, and El found that she liked the girl’s directness.

El poured some of the water simmering in the kettle into a mug and dropped a teabag in, handing the brewing concoction to Jade. “Do you want the long version or the short version?”

Jade smiled, and her normally-serious face turned beautiful. It wasn’t the ostentatious attractiveness Neal had sometimes gone for. It was subtle and unusual. El was intrigued. “I really like Neal,” Jade answered. “The longer the better.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know if people still read White Collar fics & I haven’t written in this universe for ages, but this plot idea won’t let me go.


End file.
